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THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 



(0 



Mr. Hunt is a man of the most indisputably superior worth; a Man of 

Genius in a very strict sense of that word, and in all senses which it bears 

or implies ; of brilliant, varied gifts ; of graceful fertility ; of clearness, loving- 

ness, truthfulness ; of childlike, open character ; also of most pure and even 

exemplary private deportment ; a man who can be other than loved only by 

tliose who have not seen him, or seen him from a distance through a false 

medium. 

Thomas Carlvle. 

(2) 



THE 



Wishing-Cap Papers.. 




LEIGH HUNT. 



NOW FIRST COLLECTED. 



/ 



Though I cannot promise as much entertainment, or as much elegance 
as others have done, yet the reader may be assured he shall have as much 
of both as I can. He shall, at least, find me alive while I study his 
entertainment ; for I solemnly assure him I was never yet possessed of the 
secret at once of writing and sleeping. 

Goldsmith. 



BOSTON: A 
LEE AND SHEPARD, PUBLISHERS. 

New York : 

LEE, SHEPARD AND DILLINGHAM. 
1873. 






. W ^ 



Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1872, 

By lee and SHEPARD, 

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 



Stereot3rped at the Boston Stereotype Foundry, 
19 Spring Lane. 



TO THE READER 



Not only those who, hke Lord Macaulay, '' have a 
kindness for Mr. Leigh Hunt," but all lovers of the 
pleasant art of essay writing, should find much to 
amuse and intei*est them in this volume, which con- 
tains articles, hitherto uncollected, on an agreeable 
variety of subjects, from the Indicator, Examiner, 
Literary Examiner, Companion, Tatler, London 
Journal, Monthly Repository, New Monthly Maga- 
zine, and Edinburgh Review. 

Most of the Wishing-Cap Papers are written in 
Leigh Hunt's happiest manner, and abound in rich 
and felicitous descriptions of nature, in loving com- 
ments on favorite authors and books, and in thought- 
ful and good-natured speculations on human life. 
Indeed, some of the essays in the collection are, 
it seems to me, more terse in style, more vigor- 
ous in thought, and more masculine in tone, 
than even the best papers in the Indicator * or the 

* Not the original edition of the Indicator, but a selection from that work 
made by the author himself. 



6 TO THE READER. 

Seer ; they show, moreover, that the genial essay- 
ist had "true capabilities of wrath," and could battle 
bravely for the right, as the hacks of the Toi-y press 
learned to their cost. If, as M. Taine asserts, wit is 
" the art of stating things in a pleasant way," this is 
a very witty book, and Leigh Hunt is a great wit, for 
almost all his sentences are charming examples of 
the brilliant Frenchman's definition of wit. 

Through the courtesy of Mr. James T. Fields, I 
have had the opportunity of consulting Leigh Hunt's 
own copies of the Tatler and the Literary Exami- 
ner, containing some marginal emendations in the 
author's own handwriting, to which the readers 
of the Wishing-Cap Papers are indebted for sundry 
valuable corrections, and for a few little characteristic 
touches added to several of the chapters. 

J. E. B. 

Melrose, December 4, 1872. 



CONTENTS. 



THE WISHING-CAP. 

PAGE 

I. Introduction. ii 

II. A Walk in Covent Garden. . . .22 

III. Piccadilly and the West End. . . 33 

IV. A Walk in the City 43 

V. Whitehall 52 

VI. St. James's Park 64 

VII. Spring 74 

VIII. Rainy-day Poetry 81 

IX. Eating and Drinking. .... 89 

X. The Valley of Ladies 97 

XI. Love and the Country 106 



MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 

Personal Reminiscences of Lords. . . '117 
A Letter: On, To, and By the Book- Personage 

KNOWN BY the NaME OF " ThE ReADER." . I24 

Dr. Doddridge and the Ladies 138 

Confectionery. 154 

A Treatise on Devils 160 

7 



8 CONTENTS. 

A FEW Words on Angels 184 

Child-bed : A Prose Poem 201 

Rousseau's Pygmalion 203 

On the Suburbs of Genoa and the Country 

ABOUT London. ....... 213 

Coffee-Houses and Smoking 246 

Wit Made Easy, or a Hint to Word-catchers. 257 

The Fencing-Master's Choice 262 

Twilight Accused and Defended 266 

Table Wits : A Breakfast 278 

Going to the Play again. 288 

Ladies' Bonnets in the Theatre. . . . 295 

Moliere's Tartuffe 298 

Hereditary House of Players 311 

Madame Pasta 317 

Madame Pasta in the White and Red Rose. . 331 

On French Opera Dancing 337 

Recollections of Old Actors 348 

Clarendon's History of the Rebellion. . . 360 

George Selwyn and his Contemporaries. . 388 



THE WISHING-CAP 



"At Maiano I wrote the articles which appeared in the Examiner, under the 
title of the IVishing-Cap. Probably the reader knows nothing about them ; 
but they contained some germs of a book he may not be unacquainted with, 
called The Towft, as well as some articles since approved of in the volume en- 
titled Me7t, PVomeit, and Books. 

" The title was very genuine. When I put on my cap, and pitched myself in 
imagination into the thick of Covent Garden, the pleasure I received was so 
vivid — I turned the corner of a street so much in the ordinary course of things, 
and was so tangib'y present to the pavement, the shop windows, the people, and 
a thousand agreeable recollections which looked me naturally in the face, that 
sometimes when I walk there now, the impression seems hardly more real. I 
used to feel as if I actually pitched my soul there, and that spiritual eyes might 
have seen it shot over from Tuscany, into York Street, like a rocket. It is 
much pleasanter, however, on waking up, to find soul and body together in one's 
native land : yes, even than among thy olives and vines, Boccaccio ! " — The 
Autobiography of L.KiGH Hunt. 

[Of course none of the JVishi^ig- Caps w^hlch the author collected and pub- 
lished in Men, IVoinen, and Books, are included in this volume. We have, 
however, inserted the articles on different parts of London. It is true, most 
of the persons and places mentioned in these graceful and characteristic little 
papers are more fully described in The Town. But "the first sprightly, run- 
nings " are in the earlier sketches, which have also more gusto, and are richer 
in personal reminiscences than the chapters on the same localities in that book. 
— Ed.] 



THE WISHING-CAP 



No. I. 
INTRODUCTION. 

I have cut through the air like a falcon. I would have it seem strange to 
you. But 'tis true. I would not have you believe it neither. But 'tis miracu- 
lous and true. Desire to see you brought me. — Decker's Old Fortuiutttis. 

AS when a traveller, long expected, and yet but 
half expected from abroad, suddenly enters 
a room full of his old friends, instantly all the room 
is in motion towards him, mouths are opened, hands 
are stretched forward, card tables deserted, and old 
ladies left in a state of inveteracy : he, with all his 
feelings on tiptoe, and happy to be torn in pieces, 
grasps as many hands as he can at once, turns to this 
friend, makes half an answer to that, cuts short the 
questions of soft lips, and revels in all the rewards of 
the meritoriousness of absence ; thus, I trust, my old 
friends of the Examiner will feel with me, when they 
see the hand at the bottom of this paper.* 

* Leigh Hunt's well-known signature — ^^. Ed. 

II 



12 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

After a thousand questions are asked on both sides, 
dehghtful memories brought up, and others that will 
not bear touching upon spared, I hear the most good- 
natured person in the company exclaim, " Bless me ! 
you are not at all changed." I do bless thee, thou 
handsomest of thy sex. Between you and me, I 
should not care how dilapidated I looked with some 
persons in a private meeting, — and for a short time. 
I could make a merit of the silver hairs that come 
amongst my black ones, and expect a double tender- 
ness of look for my sunken cheeks. But after all, one 
does not like to grow old. Man is in no haste to be 
venerable. The fact is, I am not old, nor do I wish 
anybody to believe that I am. But at forty there is a 
pleasure in aflecting age on purpose to be disbelieved. 
(I say forty, because I am only nine and thirty.) We 
talk of " declining into the vale of years," that people 
may say, " You decline into the vale of years ! " and 
that we may be complimented on the youthfulness of 
our appearance. The provocation lies in saying we 
are middle-aged. It, is a malignant benediction of the 
poets, — 

"God bless your middle-ageish face ! " 

I believe there are many persons abroad who regret 
the not having returned to their native country in 
time, but who would rather be shut up for life in a 
German fortress, than appear again in a public place 
in England. Thirty and forty years ago they were 
Adonises, and cannot, for the life of them, take to be- 
ing reverend. Being at a distance from home, and 
not having contemporary faces to compare with, they 
try to think that everybody grows old but themselves. 



THE WISHING-CAP. . I3 

They would fancy that the shore moves, and not 
they. I own to this weakness, though I never was an 
Adonis, nor ever shall be, which is more. 

But I can conceive no circumstances but one, that 
at any time of life would conquer in me the desire to 
be among my old scenes and friends. I used to think 
that with all my love of particular places, I should 
not care where I went, provided I could take my 
friends with me. But I find it otherwise. The fine 
buildings in Genoa made me long to take a walk down 
a London alley. The vineyards and olives of Tus- 
cany gave me a calenture for my old green fields. 
Walking about under the galleries and government 
offices of Florence, I yearned infinitely to be at the 
Examiner office in Covent Garden ; and so here I 
am. 

But it will be asked whether I am really here ; 
whether I am arrived in propria persona^ — come 
home, — seated visibly in the Examiner office. 
Doubtless I am. I have just poked the fire, and am 
toasting a foot upon each hob, with the Morning 
Chronicle in my hand. Yesterday I was in all parts 
of the town. If my presence is doubted, and the 
gentleman I run against yesterday in Fleet Street has 
any manliness in him, he will come forward and 
state that I nearly knocked the breath out of his body 
in turning the corner of Shoe Lane. 

I am as surely here in London as I shall be in 
Madrid, in Athens, in North or South America, when 
I inform the reader to that effect : perhaps I shall be 
in one of these places to-morrow. Incredulous read- 
ers may smile, especially when I inform them, that 



14 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

SO far from condescending in general to travel on foot, 
I fly. But they would be hard put to it to prove the 
contrary. Let them first account for the power of 
the human mind to fancy itself in Arabia, and then 
they may undertake to prove it impossible for me, by 
dint of a thought, actually to be there. Cogitation 
has been held by some to be nothing but local mo- 
tion. Their motion was a vulgar one, being as dif- 
ferent from mine as that of a telegraph is from light- 
ning ; but I desire to know how an uninitiated per- 
son is to pronounce these travels of mine impossible ; 
how he is to prove, and be assured that when I fancy 
myself in Arabia, I, that is, my personal conscious- 
ness, the best part of me, the ayiima of my tnundus^ 
the true immaterial life and soul, of which my body 
is but a vulgar symbol, is not, at that moment, to all 
intents and purposes, in Arabia. " I pause for a re- 
ply," as a man says, when he expects none. "• I 
think, therefore I am," said the French philosopher : 
now I think I am in Arabia, therefore I am there. I 
beg to know the difference between these two proposi- 
tions. 

I pitch myself wherever I please, like a rocket or 
a falling star. 

In short, let those who doubt my reasoning look at 
m}^ Cap. With them, anything that is visible puts 
an end to mystery. This is an age of mechanism and 
manufacture and, therefore, they say, there can be 
no longer anything fanciful. Ecce sigmuii. This 
Cap is one out of several now existing, and by no 
means the most extraordinary of its kind. It is not 
the famous Wishing-Cap of Fortunatus, but a poor 



THE WISHING-CAP. I5 

relation. Sir Walter Scott has that, and the Purse 
into the bargain. He is in the habit of going to 
court in it, to refresh his good opinion of mankind. 
The two finest Wishing-Caps are in possession of 
Mr. Wordsworth and Mr. Coleridge. The one be- 
longing to the latter is a great curiosity, and carried 
him into those dreadful seas where he saw the An- 
cient Mariner. I look upon it with more reverence 
than all the curiosities in the Museum. Mr. Southey 
has one, with which he has taken some pretty long 
flights into the East. I wish he would relate his trav- 
els in prose instead of verse. 

I do not know to what class to refer the Cap of my 
friend Elia, of the London Magazine ; certainly not 
to a modern one, with bells to it, much in use at 
courts, though it has a considerable resemblance to 
one of the same cut, worn by a retainer to the fomous 
King Lear, and also to that other belonging to the 
celebrated Yorick. I mean Hamlet's Yorick. No- 
body who hears him in it will say, " Where be your 
gibes now? Your flashes of merriment that were 
wont to set the table in a roar?" Nobody who sees 
well into the stuff' of it, will take it for any other than 
a Cap fit for the wisest head in England, provided the 
rain is to rain every day. Having less thought, but 
stouter muscles, I, for my part, must still endeavor, 
till I die, to push the world a little farther into the 
sunshine. It is for this reason I am in all parts of it ; 
one of hundreds of beings wdio are trying to furnish 
philosophers with a lever. 

But the reader must know that this Cap of mine 
not only carries me where I please, like that of For- 



1 6 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

tunatus, and introduces me to the invisible world, like 
the Caps of the mountain spirits. It makes as little 
of time as it does of space. It pitches me back into 
ages. I make love very often a hundred years ago, 
and may dine to-morrow at the table of Anacreon. 
My tea I am fond of taking with Pope and the Miss 
Blounts. A person in Tuscany often rouses me out 
of the club, at the Mermaid in Cornhill, where I am 
listening to Beaumont and Ben Jonson. I make noth- 
ing of being in Arcady at twelve o'clock, and with 
Horace between two and three. I meet old King 
Ban " on the top of Fiesole." And this is as real as 
all the rest. It was thought a modest request in the 
two lovers to say, — 

"Ye gods, annihilate but space and time, 
And make two lovers happy." * 

But let the reader peruse only two or three meta- 
physical treatises (one of them being on time), and 
then say if it is not easy to annihilate both. It is a 
vulgar supposition, that one man of forty and another 
man of forty are of the same age ; and that if two 

* Readers of Carlyle will remember Herr Teufelsdrockh's philosophical specu- 
lations upon space and time in one of the most stupendous chapters of Sartor 
Resartus. " Fortunatus hadawishing-hat," says the learned Professor, "which 
when he put on, and wished himself anywhere, behold he was there. By this 
means had Fortunatus triumphed over space, he had annihilated space ; for him 
there was no Where, but all was Here. Were a hatter to establish himself in the 
Wahngasse of Weissnichtwo, and make felts of this sort for all mankind, what a 
world we should have of it ! Still stranger, should, on the opposite side of the 
street, another hatter establish himself; and, as his fellow-craftsman made space- 
annihilating hats, make time-annihilating ! Of both would I purchase, were it 
with my last groschen ; but chiefly of this latter. To clap on your felt, and, 
simply by wishing that you were Anywhere, straightway to be there ! Next to 
clap on your other felt, and, simply by wishing that you were anywhen, straight- 
way to be i/ien / " — Ed. 



THE WISHING-CAP. 1 7 

persons set out at four o'clock to dinner, and arrive 
at the same place at the hour commonly called five, 
they have both taken the same time to arrive in. No- 
tions of boys and stockjobbers ! We have no idea 
of time but that of space. In thinking of the hour 
between one and two, we measure a distance on our 
watches. Now, as in the same space of measure- 
ment may be crammed many particles, and in the 
same journey one road may be straight and another 
crooked, so in the same space of time (the com- 
mon phrase), we ma}^ include many different masses 
of duration and varieties of experience. One man's 
time is so much tin, another's lead, another's gold. 
The link on which he tells his thoughts is his clock ; 
and the more he tells the longer he lives. The hour 
of the many-thoughted man contains many hours. 
His metal is heavy and full of matter. 

" Time, then," some of my readers may say, " is first 
nothing, and then it is something. It is easy to be 
annihilated, and yet is heavy as lead or gold." I do 
not assert that it is nothing, though it is easy of anni- 
hilation. I find it to be much : and yet how shall not 
this much be altered or melted away. How shall not 
this lead be turned into gold by the sunshine of love 
and kindness ! How shall not this gold, by the force 
of imagination, be beaten out into endless contact 
with ages ! 

Perhaps with no man living has. time been a heaviei 
or a lighter thing than with me. My metal resembles 
quicksilver, except that it is more malleable to 
warmth than cold ; though cold also renders it very 
grave and solid. Like quicksilver, it is not precious 



1 8 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

and weighty as gold ; and yet it easily unites with it, 
and helps gold itself to gild a variety of common 
things. Furthermore, it is subject to change of the 
barometer. But I am running my metallic simile too 
far for a spirit. A spirit I certainly am, by universal 
acknowledgment; though what sort of one has been 
much contested. " Time," as the philosopher says, 
" will show." Certainly I am not a malignant spirit, 
though I trifle now and then with a Caliban. Nei- 
ther am I the devil on two sticks, confined to my bot- 
tle ; nor the spirit, that according to the Italian poet, 
dwelt in the smoke of roast meat. But like certain 
spirits in poetry and romance, I have seen a good deal 
of the world, visible and invisible. Like them, I 
see knowledge. Like them I am fond of music, of 
the air, of the trees and flowers, and of liberty. In 
some things, I am not unlike the Sylph Husband of 
Marmontel. Like a spirit, I can dilate myself, till 
mountains become mole-hills ; or shrink into such 
diminutive compass, as to stand by the side of a brook, 
and live in imagination on the banks of it, with the 
little insects, as if it were some mighty river. Mil- 
lions of times have I ridden on the bat's back, and 
gone to sleep in a buttercup. But my tears inform 
me that I am human, to say nothing of my frailties. 
It is not for me to think of the drowning,* and to doubt 
whether or no I feel 

" All as sharply, 
Passioned as they." 

I shall take up, in this paper, any subject to which 
I feel an impulse, politics not excepted. It would be 

* Of Shelley. — Ed. 



THE WISHING-CAP. I9 

idle to expect that a periodical paper, however un- 
poHtical, would go into any quarters but those of 
the Reformers, when published in a reforming journal. 
My first intention was to render it a sort of with- 
drawing-room, or retirement from the more public 
part of the Examiner ; but I thought it better, upon 
consideration, to take the opportunity of giving myself 
full scope, political as well as otherwise. It is a fool- 
ish reproach to men of letters, that they meddle with 
politics. Who is to do so if they do not ? And how 
is a man of any warmth of sympathy (unless he is 
hopeless of all change) to see what is going on in the 
world, and be able honestly to repress his blame and 
his praise ? The necessity becomes stronger if he has 
been accustomed to do so. Politics, however, will 
occupy but a small part of my lucubrations.* 

I am a spirit, not without hands or feet ; but my 
strength lies in my power of flight, — in my Wish- 
ing-Cap. The greatest distinction (talents apart) be- 
tween me and other spirits that have manifested them- 
selves to these latter times, is not in age or bodily 



* Most of Leigh Hunt's literary contemporaries meddled with politics. Sir 
Walter Scott dabbled in them. Southey contributed political essays to the Quar- 
terly Review, and Coleridge wrote political articles for the Morning Post and 
the Morning Chronicle. Wordsworth was the author of a political pamphlet on 
the peace of Cintra, and Moore dashed off many a witty political squib. Wil- 
son was a rash and bitter political writer; and Hazlitt published a volume 
of Political Essays. Sydney Smith wrote political pamphlets, and published 
political articles in the newspapers. Even "the gentle Elia" wrote political 
squibs and epigrams for the Examiner and the New Times. Politics, to those 
who are desirous of becoming acquainted with anything that concerns man- 
kind, are, as Hunt says elsewhere, "a part of humane literature; and they who 
can be taught to like them in common with wit and philosophy, insensibly do 
an infinite deal of good by mingling them with the common talk of life, and help- 
ing to render the stream of public opinion irresistible." — Ed. 



20 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

appearance (for those, as I said before, are notions) ; 
but in my being a very truth-telling spirit. I tell 
nothing of myself or others, which is not pure mat- 
ter-of-fact, or, at least, which appears to me to be 
such ; a verity, which I would have the reader bear 
in mind. He wnll easily distinguish between the 
things which I talk of in a mere spirit of fancy (as 
the world calls it), and what I lay before them in the 
grosser shapes of truth. 

With regard to speaking of myself and my expe- 
riences (which I shall do very freely whenever in- 
clined), I have several reasons for it. In the first place, 
it is impossible for me to sustain a fictitious charac- 
ter, like that of Bickerstaff and others, in the great 
periodical works. Secondly, authors sometimes, as 
well as kings, "lack subjects." Thirdly, it is advisa- 
ble that authors should write only upon subjects with 
wdiich they are acquainted. Fourthly, people are 
often much better acquainted with themselves than 
the old adage implies ; though many, for that reason, 
take care never to show it. Fifthly, I am much alone, 
and have been in the habit of speculating upon my 
feelings and adventures. I believe that if the first 
person we meet in the street were to put down 
upon paper the experiences he has had in life, 
his school-days, journeys, &c., they would be found 
interesting. I hav^e been perplexed whether to speak of 
myself in the singular or the plural number, — wheth- 
er to subject myself to the impatience of people vainer, 
by saying I ; or to hamper my verisimilitudes and my 
euphonies, with saying, We were^ We would, and 
We once. 



THE WISHING-CAP. -21 

The last reason, or apology, which I have to lay 
before him for talking of myself, I shall repeat in the 
words of a great master of human nature : — 

" The most sovereign remedy for self-love is to do 
quite contrary to what these people direct, who in for- 
bidding others to speak of themselves, do consequently 
at the same time interdict thinking of themselves too. 
Pride dwells in the thought : the tongue can have but 
a very little share in it. They fancy, that to think of 
one's self is to be delighted with one's self; to fre- 
quent and converse with a man's self, to be over indul- 
gent. But this excess springs only in those who only 
take of themselves a superficial view, and dedicate their 
main inspection to their affairs ; that call meditation, 
raving and idleness, looking upon themselves as a 
third person only, and a stranger. No particular quali- 
ty can make any man proud, that will at the same time 
put so many other weak and imperfect ones, as he has 
in him in the other scale." — Mo7itaignes Essays^ 
book ii. chap. 6. 

1824. 



22 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

No. II. 
A WALK IN COVENT GARDEN. 

Ante oculos errant domus, urbs, et forma locorum, 
Succeduntque suis singula facta locis. — Ovid. 

Streets, houses, city, glide before my face, 
With all that's done in each successive place. 

THERE are three things that give a pleasant 
look to the most ordinary commonplaces : 
health, imagination, and coming from abroad. 
I have been flying from place to place in London 
for the last week, and have made my Cap as dingy 
as a city sv/allow. At one time I dipped about Cov- 
ent Garden ; now I was at the West End ; and then 
again I was at St. Paul's. I turn about the streets, as 
if I had never seen them before. To the list of 
human pleasures I have to add the satisfaction which 
arises from traversing a dirty lane. 

There is Maiden Lane here in the neighborhood. 
I do not care for it because the Examiner office was 
once there, or because the Royal Academy there held 
its infant sittings ; much less on account of the cider- 
cellar ; but, in the first place, I have traversed it a thou- 
sand times ; secondly, here are some poor book-stalls 
and picture-shops ; and thirdly, when Voltaire lived 
here " at the sign of the White Peruke," I guess that 
he did so to be in the neighborhood of Congreve and 
other wits, who had their lodgings in Southampton 
Street and Bow Street. My head is filled with them 
all. I imagine the thin Frenchman picking his way 
towards his abode in a lank peruke. I fancy that it 



THE WISHING-CAP. 23 

was not far off that he astonished the mob, who 
pelted him, with haranguing them in our language, 
producing as lively a movement in his favor as if they 
were all turned into Parisians. He got on the step 
of a doorway, and appealed '' to the nobleness of the 
national character," complimenting them on their in- 
stitutions and love of liberty. I believe they proposed 
to carry him home on their shoulders. 

I like everything about Covent Garden. It pleases 
me even that the ground belongs to the Russells, a 
liberal and lettered family. I like the green market 
in the middle, the noble portico (not to be thought 
less of, after visiting Italy), the Grecian-built church, 
the spacious streets, the narrower ones with their 
book-stalls, the neighborhood of the theatres. Other 
associations I have mentioned elsewhere.* Though 
I am fond of going to the play, I do not care in gen- 
eral for play books ; but I delight to see whole shops 
of them here. They are in harmony with the place. 
It is moving and alive with the best times of English 
comedy, and one of the pleasantest of English Society 
and verse. There, at Will's CofFee-House,t used to 
sit Dryden in his arm-chair, encouraging a young au- 
thor with a pinch out of his snuff-box. Addison is 
keeping it up over the way at Button's, with Steele, 
Garth, Congreve, and Colonel Brett (who married 
Savage's mother, and bought Gibber's wig). | Here 
come, to attend a rehearsal, Mrs. Barry, who acted 

* In the Pleasant Memories Connected with the Various Parts of the Me- 
tropolis, in The Indicator. — Ed. 

t It was on the north side of Russell Street, near Bow Street. In Mai one's 
time was numbered 23, and occupied by a perfumer. 

t The reader will find a lively account of the purchase in the eleventh chap- 
ter of Gibber's Apology. — Ed. 



24 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

such fine love-parts with her husband ; Mrs. Brace- 
girdle, Congreve's mistress, and Mrs. Oldfield, the 
Flavia of the Tatler, who gave Savage a pension.* I 
cannot help thinking with Dr. Young, that it was a 
pity Congreve did not leave his money " to poor Mrs. 
Bracegirdle," instead of a duchess who bought dia- 
mond necklaces with it. But the insinuation implied 
on the part of Young (a preferment-hunter, who wrote 
like a hermit) may be regarded with suspicion. In 
Spence's Anecdotes, Congreve has the praise of all 
who knew him as an honest, good-natured man : we 
know not what he may have otherwise given Mrs. 
Bracegirdle, nor how much regard for him was mixed 
up with the singularities of the Duchess of Marlbor- 
ough, who had an image of him seated with her at ta- 
ble after his death. To be sure, there seems a vanity in 
those bequests to people of rank; and Johnson says 
the money was wanted by his relations. Let us hope 
that those who were most intimate with him knew 
him best. The story of his reception of Voltaire 
(perhaps in Southampton Street, when he lived near 
Mrs. Bracegirdle) is not in his favor. I will take this 
opportunity of repeating an anecdote of Wycherley, 
which is ill told in Spence's book. Pope is made to 
inform us, that one day as Wycherley passed the 
Duchess of Cleveland's carriage in the ring, " she 
leaned out of the window, and cried out, loud enough 
to be heard distinctly by him, ' Sir, you're a rascal ; 
you're a villain.' " Spence's memory appears to have 
deceived him. The other account says, that she 

* See Tatler, No. 212. [In The Town, however, Hunt doubts if Mrs. Old- 
field was Flavia, and conjectures that the lady immortalized under that name 
was a Miss Osborne, who married the Bishop of Atterbury. — Eu.] 



THE WISHING-CAP. 2^ 

accosted him in a much coarser manner than this. 
Wycherley next day waited on her, and begged to 
know the reason. " Why, sir," said she, " in one of 
your plays you say that the appelLation I gave you 
belongs to all men of wit ; so I thought it fairly be- 
stowed." The compliment was not ill turned, sucli 
as it was : but " her grace " must have been a very 
disagreeable woman. Wycherley, however, was not 
nicer than his master. 

It is with difficulty that I call to mind Inigo Jones, 
as the architect of Covent Garden. Even Donne, in 
the mansion of his father-in-law, Sir Thomas Drury, 
in Drury Lane, with all his graver wit and his ro- 
mantic passion, is thrust out of my mind by the crowd 
of beaux and comedians. I can sooner find a pleas- 
ure in recollecting that Rowe frequented a tavern in 
Long Acre, and that in the same quarter dwelt Prior's 
Chloe. Who she was, I do not stop to inquire. Suf- 
fice it for me, that I know her in his verses. The 
character of all this neighborhood is essentially gay 
and social, scented with snuff-boxes, and rustling with 
hoop petticoats. The tragedy of those times does not 
interfere with it. Tragedy herself wore a hoop petti- 
coat then, and was a very courtly personage. I con- 
fess, that in latter times, Mr. Kemble carried the old 
school of Booth and Qiiin to a pitch of the didac- 
tic which disturbs my associations. Booth was a 
kind of sublimated player at a fair ; and Quin a bon- 
vivant.* But Munden and Drury Lane redeem all. 

* There is a pleasant bit concerning Quin, in Fielding's too little read Voy- 
age to Lisbon. "The only fish," he says, speakini^ of a great purchase there- 
of for a "small spill of money," "the only fish which bore any price was a John 
Dory, as it is called. I bought one of at least four pounds weight, for as many 
shillings. It resembles a turbot in shape, but exteeds it in firmness and flavor. 



26 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

I should add Sheridan, but he touches too nearly on 
grave times and melancholy recollections. Yet surely 
he, and Drury Lane, and comedy, and carelessness, 
were all made for each other. 

Those melancholy exits of the gay are vile thvngs. 
Poor Mrs. Jordan ! did nobody feel for thee in thy sad 
and mysterious exile, but those who could do nothing 
to help it? Her honest-hearted laugh rings at this 
moment in my ears ! 

I forget whether it was myself, or whether some- 
body told me it was he, who saw Jack Bannister (I 
had almost said Mr. Jack Bannister) standing one 
day, leaning on his stick, and looking up in a melan- 
choly manner at Old Drury. Old Drury is new 
Drury in face, but it is old in situation and fame ; and 
he had helped to carry all the old spirit into the new 
house. A plague on tliose real old ages that belong 
to nothing but men ! And Elliston too : — I read in 
the papers, that he plays his old parts with all the 
spirit of his former days. That can hardly be, con- 
sidering that he did not take care to remain thin like 
Lewis. Lewis's old age, after all, was an imposition, 
though he died of it. But Elliston is one of those, 
too, who will never be old, in some senses of the 



The price had the appearance of being considerable when opposed to the extra- 
ordinary cheapness of others of value, but was, in truth, so very reasonable 
when estimated by its goodness, that it left me under no other surprise than how 
the gentlemen of this county (Devonshire), not greatly eminent for the delicacy 
of their taste, had discovered the preference of the Dory to all other fish : but I 
was informed that Mr. Quin, whose distinguishing tooth hath been so justly 
celebrated, had lately visited Plymouth, and had done those honors to the Dory 
which are so justly due to it from that sect of modern philosophers, who, with 
Sir Epicure Mammon, or Sir Epicure Quin, their head, seem more to delight in 
a fi^.h-pfind thin a grirdcn, as the old Epicureans are said to have done." — Ed. 



THE WISHING-CAP. Z*] 

word. I wish with all my heart he was as young as 
he was twenty years ago, and I with him, and that 
we knew as much then as we do now. I do not 
think either of us would be a bit the worse or less 
young for it. I would have praised him as much as 
I did then for his comedy, and for his making love 
better than any man on the stage ; but he would not 
have acted tragedy so often, nor would I have written 
those fierce criticisms on the living dramatists, whose 
taking to farce instead of comedy was not their fault, 
but the age's. - Good-natured Tom Dibdin, behold at 
last your critic repentant ! 

C. L., why didst thou ever quit Russell Street? 
Why didst thou leave the warm crowd of humanity, 
which thou lovest so well, to go and shiver on the 
side of the New River, enticing thy many friends to 
walk in? Were friends and sittings up at night too 
attractive? And was there no other way to get rid 
of them ? Reader, we have not waked the niglit-owl 
with a catch, for C. L. is not musical. He will put 
up with nothing but snatches of old songs. ^Mozart 
is to him an alien, and Paesiello the Pope of Rome. 
But we have drawn three souls out of one card-play- 
er ; and might have waked all the ghosts in our 
neighborhood at Will's and Button's, seeing that 
there is no pride in the next world, and some wit left 
in this. What would I not give for another Thurs- 
day evening? It was humanity's triumph ; for whist- 
players and no whist-players there for the first time 
met together. Talk not to me of great houses in 
which such things occur ; for there the whist-players 
are gamblers, and the no whist-players are nobody at 



28 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

all. Here, the v/hist was for its own sake, and yet 
the non-players were tolerated. But the triumph 
went further. Here was R., to represent among us 
the plumpness of office and the solidity of govern- 
ment. My brother reformer, W. H., came to rest his 
disappointments and his paradoxes. Vain expecta- 
tion ! With him contended A. the most well-bred 
of musicians, who hates a paradox like an unresolved 
discord. Another A. was there, the best of neigh- 
bors, especially if you happen to be confined to your 
room. Item, a third A. the most trusting of linen- 
drapers, who lent a poet a hundred pounds. I do not 
know whether he has been paid. I hope not ; for he 
deserves to enjoy the interest forever, and in his case 
it is a rich one. M. B. was one of us, having his 
hands in his waistcoat pockets like his friend, and 
talking well upon episodes. And there, M. L., — why 
have I not the art, like the old writers of dedications, 
of at once loading thee with panegyric, and saving the 
shoulders of thy modesty? an art, by the by, which 
was so conspicuously concealed, that nobody would 
have suspected them of having it. There also came 
old Captain B., who had been round the world with 
Cook, and was the first man who planted a pun in 
Otaheite. Nevertheless, though I met him fifty times, 
I never had the courage to address liim, he appeared 
to be so wrapped up in his tranquillity and his whist. 
He seemed to be taking a long repose from his storms. 
The jovial face of Colonel P., blooming with a second 
youth, made me bolder. He had been round the 
world also, when a boy, and had challenged his lieu- 
tenant for not standing closer by his captain. This 



THE WISHING-CAP. 29 

illegality completed my confidence. With K. we re- 
joiced over his successful plays, and tried to be in- 
different over the others. He has humanity enough 
to remember with pleasure, that on the latter occa- 
sion we mustered up (some of us at least) as great an 
appetite at supper as if two plays had succeeded at 
once. It is more than we could have looked for, had 
a critic written them, instead of a poet. But some- 
how these poetical observers see farther into niceties 
of us than your metaphysical. With regard to my- 
self, the fact was (and I shall do myself no harm to 
confess it — very likely he knows it already) that my 
appetite was really great and craving. On livelier 
occasions, if my lungs have not been well exercised, 
I will not swear that I could eat tlie wing of a chicken. 
My heart is up and dancing, and objects to the pas- 
sage of anything grosser than a pint of wine. * 



* Lamb moved from No. 4, Inner Temple Lane, to Russell Street, Covent Gar- 
den, in the autumn of 1S17. " We have left the Temple," writes Mary Lamb 
to Miss Wordsworth. " Our rooms were dirty and out of repair, and the incon- 
veniences of living in chambers became every year more irksome, and so, at last, 
we mustered up resolution enough to leave the old place, that so long has shel- 
tered us ; and here we are, living at a brazier's shop, No. 20, in Russell Street, 
Covent Garden, a place all alive with noise and bustle ; Drury Lane Theatre in 
sight from our front, and Covent Garden from our back windows. The hubbub 
of the carriages returning from the play does not annoy me in the least ; strange 
that it does not, for it is quite tremendous. I quite enjoy looking out of the 
window, and listening to the calling up of the carriages, and the squabbles of the 
coachmen and link-boys. It is the oddest scene to look down upon. " Lamb 
himself was equally well pleased with their new abode, declaring that they were 
in the individual spot he liked best in all London. Here he wrote the best of 
the Essays of Elia. In 1S23 he left the city, with its theatres and book-stalls, and 
took a cottage in Colebrook Rowe, Islington. It was George Dyev who walked 
into the New River, and thus gave Elia a subject for the fine humorous paper 
entitled Amicus Redivivus. 

Perhaps a word or two on some of the initials in the above reminiscence of 
Lamb's Thursday evening suppers will not be wholly superfluous. Of course 
C. L. is Charles Lamb, and W. H., William Hazlitt, and Captain B. is Can- 



30 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

All that part of the metropolis which may now be 
called the centre of it, is classic ground : from Fleet 
Street, where Johnson and Goldsmith lived, Gerrard 
Street, Soho, wdiich contains the residence of Dry- 
den.* It includes the chief places of resort, during 



tain Bumey, and M. B., Martin Burney, whose dirty hands were so provocative 
of Lamb's wit. The captain, according to Crabb Robinson, was "a fine, noble 
creature, — gentle with a rough exterior, as became the associate of Captain 
Cook in his voyages round the world, and the literary historian of all these acts 
of circumnavigation." The three A. 's were Thomas Allsop, Thomas Alsager, and 
William Ayrton, of the Italian Opera. Lamb said Ayrton was "a wit and 
devilish good fellow." K. stands for James Sheridan Knowles, the dramatist, 
author of Virginius. R. is John Rickman, clerk of the House of Com- 
mons. "His manners," writes Southey of Rickman, " are stoical : they are 
like the husk of the cocoa-nut, and his inner nature is like the milk within its 
kernel. When I go to London I am always his guest. He gives me but half 
his hand, but his whole heart — and there is not that thing in the world which 
he thinks would serve or gratify me that he does not do for me, unless it be 
something which he thinks I can as well do myself " George Dyer introduced 
Lamb to Rickman. Lamb was so delighted with the man that he wrote a long 
letter about him to Manning. "He is, "says Elia, exultingly, "a most pleasant 
hand ; a fine, rattling fellow, has gone through life laughing at solemn apes ; — him- 
self hugely literate, oppressively full of information in all stuff of conversation, 
from matter of fact to Xenophon and Plato — can talk Greek with Porson, poli- 
tics with Thelwall, conjecture with George Dyer, nonsense with me, and anything 
with anybody ; a great farmer, somewhat concerned in an agricultural magazine 
— reads no poetry but Shakespeare, very intimate with Southey, but never 
reads his poetry, relishes George Dyer, thoroughly penetrates into the ridicu- 
lous wherever found, understands the first time (a great desideratum in common 
minds) — you need never twice speak to him: does not want explanations, 
translations, limitations, as Professor Godwin does when you make an assertion ; 
up to anything ; down to anything ; whatever sapit hotninem. A perfect man. 
All this farrago, which must perplex you to read, and has put me to a little 
trouble to select, only proves how impossible it is to describe a pleasaiit hand. 
You must see Rickman to know him, for he is a species in one ; a new class ; an 
exotic ; any slip of which I am proud to put in my garden pot." A "pleasant 
hand " truly : but how different from Southey's stoical-mannered man ! Ls this 
description of Rickman true in all its particulars, or was Lamb hoaxing the 
" learned Trismegist " ? — Ed. 

* It was "the fifth," says Mr. Malone, "in coming from Little Newport 
Street, and is now numbered 43. Behind, his apartments looked into the gar- 
dens of Leicester House." 

[We copy this interesting passage relating to Covent Garden from a curious 



THE WISHIXG-CAP. 3I 

the three periods, in which poetry and wit were alhed 
with famihar hfe ; — Dryden's period, with Etherege, 
Wycherley, Rochester, and others ; — the time of Steele 
and Addison, Garth, Vanbrugh, Congreve, &c., and 
that of the two authors above mentioned, who left us 
just before the French revolution . In the Strand, oppo- 
site Beaufort Buildings, walking at a very quick pace 
for a man of his years, I once saw Cumberland, the 
last survivor of Retaliation. His appearance was gen- 
tlemanly (suited to his old character), and his face 
earnest and thoughtful. I would have accosted him, 
and thanked him for a criticism he wrote on a per- 
formance of mine ; but besides carrying a certain habit 
of independence at that time to a pitch of martyrdom, 
I felt as if it would be an impertinence in so young a 
man to bring himself into contact on such an occa- 
sion with an associate of Goldsmith and Johnson. 
The performance, to say the truth, was very crude 
and young, and not worth his praises : nor could I 
conceal from myself, that a panegyric bestowed on 
him in the course of it had warmed the heart of the 
old author. But his criticism was delightful, contain- 
ing some excellent gossip upon Qtiin, Garrick, and 
others. It appeared in the London Review, a work 

letter by Thomas Grignion, addressed to Tom Dibdin, and published in a little 
volume entitled Fly Leaves, or Scraps and Sketches : — 

"You will see by my plan of 1691, that Covent Garden was then in the empo- 
rium of the arts and sciences, and the residence of the chief nobility of the king- 
dom. My late dear grandfather's cordial friend, the celebrated Barton Booth, 
lived in Charles Street, No. 4 ; Colley Gibber lived in No. 3 ; and Easty's 
Hotel was Mr. Garrick's ; Mrs. Oldfield lived in Southampton Street. Wilkes 
built the hou?e in Bow Street, next door but one to the theatre ; Garrick and 
Macklin lodged in it. I thought this information respecting our truly classic 
ground might not be uninteresting to you." — Ed.] 



33 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

which did not continue long, probably because the 
reviewers put their names to it. To be praised by 
one of the heroes of Retaliation appeared to me a 
piece of good fortune beyond all others ; too good 
even for my vanity to take without drawback. 

I have spoken of the laugh of Mrs. Jordan. There 
is a delightful little poem by Clement Marot, On the 
Laugh of Madame D'Albret^ which seems to re- 
cord a similar quintessence of glee, cordiality, and 
lightness. It reminded me of her the moment I 
read it. 

DU RIS DE MADAME D'ALBRET. 

Elle lia tres bien ceste gorge d'albastre, 

A doux jiarler, ce cler tainct, ces beaux jeux ; 

Mais, en effect, ce petit ris follastre, 

C'est a mon gre, ce qui lui sied le mieux: 

Elle en pourroit les chemins et les lieux, 

Ou elle passe, a plaisir inciter: 

Et si ennuy me venoit contrister, 

Tant que par mort fusta ma vie abbatue, 

111 ne faudroit, pour ms resusciter, 

Que ce ris la, duquel elle me tue. 

Yes. iliat fair neck, too beautiful by half, 

Those eyes, that voice, that bloom, all do her honor : 

Yet after all, that little giddy laugh 

Is what, in my mind, sits the best upon her. 

Good God ! 'twould make the very streets and ways 
Through which she passes, burst Into a pleasure ! 

Did melancholy come to mar my days, 

And kill me in the lap of too much leisure, 

No spell were wanting, from tlie dead to raise me, 

But only that sweet laugh, wherewith she slays me. 



THE WISHING-CAP. 33 

No. III. 
PICCADILLY AND THE WEST END. 

Lo ! stately streets ; lo ! squares that court the breeze. — Thomson. 

IF I had health, and my friends were all com- 
fortable, and the world as happy as it might 
be, and I could transport everybody where I pleased 
as well as myself, and books were as plentiful as 
blackberries, and a thousand other things (as some- 
body said) were a thousand other things, the pleas- 
ure I should take in writing these papers would 
be inconceivable. As it is, it is no mean conso- 
lation. The house I generally w^rite in being large, 
I contrive to dismiss certain little scholars I have 
into a distant play-room, and get an hour to myself 
after breakfast, uninterrupted : — the sound of a wood 
fire is crackling in my ears; — and with a fresh pen 
and a fair sheet of paper, I begin.* 

But I am fancying myself in Italy : and forget I 
am in London, at the West End of the town. 

By the West End of the town, I understand Picca- 
dilly, the squares, and their neighborhood, as far as 
the Regent's Park. The other parks ought to be in- 
cluded : but I must treat of them another time. 

* In Elia's letter to Southey, Leigh Hunt's "little scholars" are affection- 
ately mentioned. Here is the passage: — "Leigh Hunt is now in Itnly ; on 
his departure to which land with much regret I took my leave of him and of his 
little family — seven of them, si-, with their mother —and as kind a set of little 
people, as affectionate children, as ever blessed a .parent. Had you seen them, sir, 
I think you could not have looked upon them as so many little Jonases, but rather 
as pledges of the vessel's safetv, that was to bear such a freight of love." — Ed. 

3 



34 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

The West End is a very agreeable portion of the 
world to me for three reasons : — Imprimis, because I 
have lived there ; secondly, because it is the next 
part of the town to Hampstead, my other place of 
abode ; and thirdly, because it contains the fairest 
portion of God's creatures under the sun. If the two 
first reasons are thought egotistical, they will be 
found to resemble most others given by people for 
their preference of places. The only difference be- 
tween them and me is, that I tell what I feel. As to 
the third reason, it is not only what no Englishman 
will dispute, but no Frenchman or Italian that has 
seen English women. But of this, more hereafter. 

The West End may be supposed to commence at 
Leicester Square. It is but a mongrel square, a 
mixture of house and shop ; but it is green in the 
middle, and contains a statue of some prince. There 
are people wdio object to these royal statues, thinking 
it a pity that they are not rather those of some great 
philosophers, poets, or other public benefactors. But 
when they reflect that the faces are too far off* to be 
seen, and that few persons know who they are, the 
objection perhaps will vanish. In Leicester Square, 
at the house of Sir Joshua Reynolds (situate, I be- 
lieve, in the west, side, towards the alley from which 
you cross into Coventry Street), were many meetings 
of Johnson, Goldsmith, and others. Leicester House 
(now lost in the large house with shops on the north 
side) was the residence of Frederick, Prince of Wales,* 

* In the diseases and jarring tempers of this prince and his wife, may be dis- 
cerned the seeds of the unfortunate malady which afflicted the late king, their 
son. [George III., who was deprived of reason during the last ten years of his 
life. -EdJ ■■ 



THE WISHING-CAP. 35 

who affected the love of liberty, and patronized 
Thomson.* Whitcomb Street was formerly called 
Hedge Lane, no doubt from a lane which ran up 
from Charring Cross to the fields about Piccadilly 
and Marylebone. Think of lovers having walked 
here on a May-morning ! In a house opposite Cov- 
entry Street lodged an early friend of mine, whom 
it is a comfort to me to take even this obscure way 
of noticing. He was an intelligent fellow, full of 
goodness, and in love with music, and poetry, and 
all o-ood things. I once walked with him a hundred 
and twelve miles along the coast from Margate to 
Brighton, talking, laughing, and singing all the way, 
eating breakfasts which made us ashamed to ask for 
more, and frilling to sleep at night the moment we 
laid our heads on the pillow. We did it in four days. 
Poor J. R. ! He had an overstock of love, which was 
not very happily placed. He become sick, unsuccess- 
ful, a wanderer ; and was at last taken prisoner by 
the French, and died during the long detention of 
his countrymen by Napoleon. He wrote me a long 
letter from Bagneres, where he had been suffered to 
go for the benefit of his health ; and I delayed, from 
day to day, in order to write him as long an answer, 
1:11 I delayed for months, and heard of his death. 
The letter has been upon my conscience ever since. 
It would be a useful task for those who have been 
culpable during their lives on the score of delay, and 
other petty neglects of duty, to set down upon paper 

* Leigh Hunt should not have forgotten Hogarth, who lived at the " Painter's 
Head," in Leicester Square. — Ed. 



2,6 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

all the unkind and serious consequences resulting 
from it. There are petty as well as great remorses 
which people feel, on and off, during the whole of 
their lives ; and a good many of them amount to a 
good large remorse ; and with reason, considering 
what they do. I have an assortment of my own. 
which make me speak. The one in question has 
never suffered me to pass by that house, or think of 
it, without a pang. I hope it was on a more fanciful 
account that Dr. Johnson always avoided going 
through Sydney's, or Cranborne Alley, in this neigh- 
borhood, I forget which. 

In Piccadilly, during the time of Cromwell and the 
Stuarts, was a house of entertainment with a bowl- 
ing-green, where the gentry and members of Parlia- 
ment used to refresh themselves. Here came the 
sprightly wits of the court, and the grave heads that 
earned for us our liberties. Parliament at that time 
used to meet at eight in the morning. If statesmen 
got a little too much wine after dinner, it was in hon- 
or of Phyllis and Chloe, and not to put themselves in 
a fit state for settling the affairs of the world. They 
did their work with clear heads ; and if they gam- 
bled, gambled in the open air, which is better than 
losing one's money and health together in the club- 
rooms about St. James's. It is doubttul whether the 
Burlington House mentioned in Gray's Trivia was 
the one in Piccadilly, or anotlier in the Strand : 
most probably the former. I cannot refer to books. 
As the passage, however, is metropolitan and pleas- 
ant, I will lay it before the reader : — 



THE WISHING-CAP. 37 

"Come, Fortescue, sincere, experienced friend. 
Thy briefs, thy deeds, and even thy fees, suspend ; 
Come, let us leave the Temple's silent walls ; 
Me business to my distant lodging calls : 
Through the long Strand together let us stray ; 
With thee conversing I forget the way. 
Behold that narrow street which steep descends, 
Whose building to the slimy shore extends ; 
Here Arundel's famed structure reared its frame, 
The street alone retains an empty name. 
Where Titian's glowing paint the canvas warmed, 
And Raphael's fair design with judgment charmed, 
Now hangs the bellman's song, and pasted here 
Tlie colored prints of Overton appear. 
Where statues breathed, the work of Phidias' hands, 
A wooden pump or lonely watch-house stands. 
There Essex' stately pile adorned the shore. 
There Cecil's, Bedford's, VilHers', now no more. 
Yet Burlington's fair palace still remains ; 
Beauty within, without proportion reigns. 
Beneath his eye declaring Art revives. 
The wall with animated picture lives. 
There Handel strikes the strings, the melting strain 
Transports the soul, and thrills through every vein. 
Tliere oft I enter (but with cleaner shoes) 
For Burlington's beloved by every Muse." 

Handel and Gay must have found two subjects of 
mutual interest: music, of which the latter was a 
judge ; and good eating, in which, Congreve tells us, 
he was a great performer.* Handel set his pretty 
Serenata of Acis and Galatea to music. I have never 
been inside Burlington House ; but I once witnessed 
an adventure inside the gates, which Gay might have 
vv-rittcn upon had he seen it, and Handel have set to 
r.ir.sic with drums and trumpets. The reader must 
kiiow I have been a soldier, have had a red coat and 

* In a letter to Pope. See Spence's Anecdotes. "As the French philoso- 
pher," says Congreve, '"used to prove his existence hy cogito, ergo sum. the 
greatest proof of Gay's existence is edii ergo est." Gay's poems abound with al- 
lusions to eating and drinking. [Thackeray says Gay was "forever eating 
and saying good things." — Ed.] 



38 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

great long green feather, and bivouacked in Du- 
four's Place. I have seen horrid war at Wormwood 
Scrubbs, and marched from " Ealing to Acton " in 
all the dusty glory of a campaign. Our regiment 
had not been long organized, when it was announced 
to us that we were to have Lord A. for our colonel, 
and that his lordship would make his first appear- 
ance among us on a certain morning, on the parade 
before Burlington House. We mustered about a 
thousand strong at that time, and were all under arms 
on the day appointed, anxious and exalted. On a 
sudden the great gates are thrown open, the band 
strikes up, the regiment presents arms, and his lord- 
ship, on a gallant white charger, instead of riding 
tenderly in, introduces himself to us by pitching head 
foremost over his horse's neck ! The debut was awk- 
ward : the sympathy hardly made it better ; but noth- 
ing came of the bad omen ; unless it was prophetic 
of the prostration which was afterwards required of 
the noble lord in China, and which he so naturally 
refused to make. The ko-tou to the band-major was 
certainly enough, once in a man's life. 

Golden Square is a vile square, though it was 
once among the most fashionable.* You gather this 
from the slip-slop novels, which always make a point 
of being high-bred. No hero can have an interesting 
aspect, and no heroine a becoming wretchedness of 
mind, unless the family have an establishment in Port- 
man or Grosvenor Square to support it. Soho Square 



* " I have a grim pleasure in thinking thi.t Golden Square was once the resort 
of the aristocracy," says Thackeray, in a delightful digression on the mutations 
of fashion, in Philip. — Ed. 



THE WISHING-CAP. 39 

is much better than Golden, for it has trees.* A 
great improvement has been made of late years in this 
respect in most of the squares ; but the two just 
mentioned together certainly bear the palm. They 
are all great ornaments to the town, and serve to 
keep it healthy. In some parts of Italy they have a 
pretty custom of putting inscriptions over the doors 
and gateways, both in town and country. I have 
often thought that mottoes would be an addition both 
agreeable and useful to the doors of our fine houses 
at the West End. The spaces over the entrances seem 
to invite them. The passengers would be amused ; 
and the householder who put up the inscription (for 
every new possessor should have his own) would feel 
it a sort of tie on his character. Devices of all kinds 
are useful in this point of view, except hereditary 
ones ; for those are not a man's own, and remind him 
of nothing but the antiquity of his family. Once and 
away, they may give him a just pride or as just a 
qualm. A curious list of contrasts might be made 
out between modern lands and the mottoes to their 
arms. 

The long streets without shops to them, in thi§ part 
of the town, and with brick houses all built in the 
same manner, have a strange look to persons who have 
resided in Italy. In the cities there, the houses varv 
at every step, and are faced with stucco. The ad- 
vantage is on the side of the London houses in point 



* Sir Roger De Coverley lived in Soho Square during his visits to London in 
his "fine-gentleman days;" but later in life he preferred humbler quarters 
when in towTi. When he came up to London to get a sight of Prince Eugene, 
he lodged in Norfolk Street. — Ed. 



40 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

of snngness, especially on the ground floors, which in 
Italy have the windows barred over with iron, which 
gives thetn a prison look. It is impossible also for 
an Englishman, at least in winter time, to divest him- 
self of the preference due to the snug curtains and 
carpets all over the house inside, things which do not 
abound in the south. But in point of architecture 
and general appearance, there is no comparison. The 
houses in Italy are on a larger scale, the variety inter- 
esting, and the proportions very often beautiful and in 
high taste. The stucco and marble also suit the blue 
sky. You see that the houses belong to a country of 
artists. Nevertheless, give me the West End of my 
old metropolis with its world of comfort, its firesides, 
and its fair faces. I flit from drawing-room to draw- 
ing-room, delighted with the endless succession of' 
wealth, beauty, and elegance, the music, the books, 
the graceful sisterhoods, the respectable parents, — in 
short, with everything except the climate over their 
heads, and the spleen too often in their faces. What 
a pity the whole world cannot exchange their advan- 
tages with one another ! 

In Marylebone, Pope went for a short time to 
school. There was a house and bowling-green there 
in his time, similar to the one in Piccadilly, which I 
suppose it succeeded. It was frequented by the best 
company, bowls at that time being a game justly 
held in estimation. Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham, 
was so constant a visitor, that he was said to live 
there. Marylebone Gardens afterwards became cel- 
ebrated for the same entertainments as the modern 
Vauxhall. They existed up to a late period. Chat- 



THE WISHING-CAP. 4I 

terton wrote a cantata for them ; a burlesque (if I 
remember) of the quarrels and amours of the pagan 
heaven. The Thrales had a house in Hanover 
Square, where Johnson visited. 

The West End of London, for an obvious reason, is 
of little interest in a classical point of view, com- 
pared with other parts of the town. One or two 
writers like Gibbon do nothing for so great a quarter. 
Even Covent Garden is not the most inspired ground. 
The most sacred places are now occupied by the 
money-changers of Cornhill and the Borough. Of 
these in my next. But O for the evenings again that 
I have passed there, especially at a house at the other 
end of Oxford Street ! The N.'s lived there, the most 
Catholic of Catholics, for their spirit embraced the 
whole world.* There we should have waked the 
night-owl with a catch, had an owl been within hear- 
ing. The watchman did instead. The solitary pas- 
senger who was astonished at our Laughing Trios, 
was not the less so at the majestic rolling of the organ 
that would follow it ; just emblem of the devotion for 
all good things which we had in our hearts. There 
came J. G., a set of airy crotchets in the shape of a 
man ; and H. R. (always ready with his tenor, his 
joke, and his breathing nod of acquiescence), for 
whom I shall have another pang in my conscience 
if I do not write to him (not because he will die, but 
because he will think my friendship is dead, which it 
can never be), and C. C, who groaned a hundred times 
of an evening in the fullness of his satisfaction (I 



* The Novellos. See Charles Lamb's letter to Hunt, and the Chapter on 
Ears in the Essays of Elia. — En 



42 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

hope to hear shortly that benevolent grind of his 
epiglottis) ; and the G.s' pleasant specimens of hu- 
manity ; and Kate H., a beauty fit to take coffee with 
the party in the Rape of the Lock : — 

" On her white breast a sparkling cross she wore, 
Which Jews might kiss, and infidels adore. " 

And it was as Catholic too as that of Belinda. 
Kate was tall, had a fine black head of hair, with 
eyes to match, and a face made for a portrait. When 
she came home from the play, and sat down in her 
long scarlet mantle, showing only her throat and fine 
curls, and sparkling smiles, you saw how many eyes 
had been looking at her from the pit. A husband 
carried her off to a distance, and we never saw her 
again, which was unfair : I wonder how these hus- 
bands reconcile it to their consciences. C. L. came 
there sometimes " to wonder at our quaint spirits," 
with a quainter spirit of his own. He would put up 
with no anthems but Kent's, and with no songs but 
Water parted from the Sea. His sister humbly sug- 
gested, at a beautiful passage in Mozart, that she 
thought there was some merit in that. He would 
not hear of it. What was the consequence? Why, 
that he got loved by everybody in spite of his in- 
tolerance ; which, with him, is apt to have more hu- 
manity in it than the liberality of other men. 



THE WISHING-CAP. 43 

No. IV. 
A WALK IN THE CITY. 

Rursus et urbe frui. — Ovid. 
Again to enjoy the city. 

WHEN I entered the metropolis on my pres- 
ent visit, I lighted with my Wishing-Cap on 
St. Paul's Cathedral. Could I have fancied a devil 
with me on so sacred a place, I should have taken 
myself for Don Cleofas in the novel ; for roofs and 
walls fly open before me, as easily as I fly over them ; 
and I saw in an instant the whole neighborhood, with 
all that was going on inside the houses. The inhabi- 
tants need not be alarmed, as it is not my intention to 
pursue the likeness between this paper and the Devil 
on Two Sticks any farther at present. I shall content 
myself with expressing the agreeable surprise that 
seized me on observing a little room, the inhabitant of 
which was nursing an abundance of plants and flowers 
against the spring. Among them was even an orange 
tree. The very spirit of the Flora Domestica seemed 
to be there. Surely, thought I, Nature must love those 
who have so much love for her. If they have joy, 
the joy must be doubled ; and though they be full of 
sorrow, tnere must be still room, as in the cup of the 
Arabian, for the rose-leaf to swim at top. 

At their old place of resort in St. Paul's Church- 
yard, I used to meet the survivors of the dinner par- 



44 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS, 

ties of Mr. Johnson, the respectable bookseller. There 
was G., buckling himself up, with his arms crossed, 
for a controversy ; and F., like a little old white- 
headed lion, " full of sound and fury," but by no 
means " signifying nothing ; " and L. E., one of a 
volatile generation, who have the art of settling them- 
selves into teachers ; and good old gaunt Bonnycastle 
(whom I name openly because he is no more), full of 
his anecdotes and his Shakespeare, and showing his 
teeth when he smiled, like a Houyhnhnm condescend- 
ing to wear a human shape : and last, but not least, that 
whole body of the magistracy personified, Horace- 
loving old Kinnaird, a romantic aristocrat, to whom 
God save the King was a requiem, and a bow from, 
a court otiicer a beatific vision. His frame, poor 
fellow ! was like a square mile of dropsy ; but he had 
a large sparkling black eye, like a boy ; and he quoted 
his Horace, and told his anecdote of " my lud North" 
to the last. For all his excess of loyalty, he was hu- 
mane to us Jacobins, his adoration of rank being 
mainly connected with a notion of its high breeding. 
To give him quotation for quotation, — to answer, 
when he said, — 

" Persicos odi, puer, apparatus," ^- 

"Ah, Mr. Kinnaird, and that the elegant invitation 
to MtEcenas, — 

' Tyrrhena regum progenies,' " — 

was a bond of union with him forever. 

I take a melancholy satisfaction (being an author) 
in walking down Paternoster Row. The booksellers 
hereabouts and eastwards do not make their shop 
windows so lively as those of the Strand and West 



THE WISHING-CAP. 45 

End. Mr. Hunter, in St. Paul's Churchyard, humane- 
ly shows us a portrait of Mr. Edgeworth or Mr. Day, 
to qualify the dryness of his divinity ; * but the mere 
warehouse look of the shops of Messrs. Longman 
and others is a satire on the trade. 

The City and the Borough contain the most classi- 
cal ground in the metropolis. In the former, besides 
Pope and Gray, were born three out of the four great 
English poets, — Chaucer, Spenser, and Milton : the 
literary clubs and tavern-meetings of the age of Shake- 
speare were held in Fleet Street and Cornhill ; and 
Shakespeare's theatre was over the water by the 
Borough. Another stood near the present Apothe- 
caries' Hall, in Blackfriars. From the Borough Chau- 
cer set out on the journey to Canterbury with his 
Pilgrims. I have touched upon these matters before ; 
but I repeat them here, partly for the pleasure of 
doing so, and partly to remark how the celebrity aris- 
ing from authorship survives every other. Old city 
palaces,, the dwellings of a proud nobility, have fallen 
one after the other : you must now dig for their me- 
morials in dusty books. Political tumults have sha- 
ken perhaps every street in London : you must search 
for them in old chronicles, which are not read by one 
person in a million. But in the living productions 



* Richard Lovell Edgeworth, brother of Maria Edgeworth. " Mr. Edge- 
worth," says Sydney Smith, in a review of the essay on Irish Bulls, "seems 
to possess the sentiments of an accomplished gentleman, the information of a 
scholar, and the vivacity of a first-rate harlequin. He is fuddled with animal 
spirits, giddy with constitutional joy ; in such a state he must have written on, 
or burst. A discharge of ink was an evacuation absolutely necessary to avoid 
fatal and plethoric congestion." Mr. Day is the good and eccentric Thomas 
Day, author of Sandford and Merton. — En. 



46 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

of genius survive at once the rare individuals born, 
and the places that gave them birth. A petty inci- 
dent in the life of one of these men shall be repeated 
a hundred times to do honor to a particular spot. It 
is said to be on record, that Chaucer was fined a 
shilling for beating a friar in P'leet Street, — a cir- 
cumstance that hardly seems compatible w^ith the 
character of the gentle poet, who describes himself 
as shy in his manners, and going along with his eyes 
bent on the ground. But if the reader has been in 
the south, and seen w^iat sturdy vagabonds there are 
among reverend persons, trudging along with their 
hard, sneering faces, their staves, and their dirty drug- 
get cloaks, the provocation seems far from unlikely ; 
especially when it is considered that our poet, for all 
his gentleness, was somewhat of an uproarious re- 
former. 

It must be confessed that it is not easy to walk 
about London and indulge in retrospective meditation. 
The noise being great, as Cowley would say, is little. 
It might serve to deafen itself, like the Falls of Niaga- 
ra ; but to be shouldered out of one's reverie is not so 
pleasant. It seems as impossible for anybody but a 
hypochondriac to think in Cheapside as for a fish in 
the Channel to be at rest. Yet I prefer a hundred 
times making m.y way in the most crowded streets to 
walking along a suburban city street, which is neither 
town nor country, — neither City nor West End. In 
the City, shops and a certain bustle are fitting. Every- 
thing ought to be alive, — the pavement, the windows, 
the prospect. A genuine piece of quiet is good, but 
this must be in some old street or corner. Bread 



THE WISHING- CAP. 47 

Street has a right to be tranquil, both because it is 
ancient and because Milton was born there. To go 
through Christ-Hospital,* when my old school-fellows 
are at their books, is a pleasant transitign from the 
bustle of grown life to the dreams of boyhood. Any 
Lpot, where you meet with a piece of antique build- 
ing, a Gothic archway, or an old tottering house with 
a coat of arms upon it, is a happy variety. I have a 
particular respect for Austin Friars, for a reason 
which I shall give presently. But rather than walk 
in one of your " respectable " new streets, such as the 
" ger^teel " ramifications out of Blackfriars Road or 
the City Road, I would take my stroll through all 
the old alleys, from Pudding Lane to Pie Corner. I 
must have either antiquity to remind me of the past 
generations, or something busy and going on to warm 
my heart with the present. A new monotonous brick 
street, full, perhaps, of government dependants, who 
pass their lives between " the desk's dead wood " and 
a vegetation in those long lines of pots from the brick- 
kiln, — if I were one of them, I would sooner live in 
a brick-field itself, provided there were a single tree 
to look at from my window. It is true they walk out 
of an evening in the dusty roads. O, charitable Sur- 
rey Theatre, and Sadler's Wells, and thou Bagnigge 
(who ought to be in being, if thou art not), wrongly 
are ye despised by the independent gentlemen who 
are fortunate enough to vegetate and be in flower at 
the West End ! What the coach-maker and tailor are 



* This, Hunt maintains, in his Autobiography, is its proper name, and not 
Christ's Hoy.pital, as Lamb cills it in his two essays on the old school. — Ed. 



48 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

to them, helping them to their movable pots and 
their tuHp fashions, are ye to the sadder and more 
thinking generation of the dwellers in by-places. 
O, half price at the great theatres! much more foul- 
mouthed are they who cry out against thee, because 
thou disturbest their polite sympathy at the fourth 
act, than the throng of money economists, who, re- 
leased from^ their long and respectable patience, burst 
in upon thy expanded doors, time enough to supply 
themselves with criticism for the next week on Mr. 
Kean and Mr. Macready, and Mr. Liston in the farce. 
Besides, w^hat would our worthy London 'prentices 
do in the absence of their old city sports and tumul- 
tuous meetings, when the cry of " clubs ! " used to fur- 
nish them with a proper supply of hard blows and 
sympathy for one another? To you, gentle sub-urban- 
ites (not excepting the Cobourg, though its name be 
modern and its gentility somewhat vociferous), to you 
they repair " to light their wasted urns," — to rub off 
the scurf generated by money-getting and hard ser- 
vice, and fit themselves for becoming creditors, magis- 
trates, and givers of good dinners. Unfortunately, 
this intellectual regimen is not so good for digestion 
as the foot-ball and targ^et-shootinsr, in which our 
gallant apprentices excelled of old. Our shopmen 
partake with others of the sickliness of a lettered 
generation. They must have their tea to carry off 
the vapors, and to generate more. " Mighty roast 
beef" is an enemy not to be encountered with the old 
impunity ; and gout and peevishness occupy their arm- 
chairs, amidst a world of provoking comforts, at a time 
of life when your citizen used only to be reasonably 



THE WISHING-CAP. 49 

bilious. This is attributed to the progress of civili- 
zation, and to " us youth," the authors who grow 
sickly ourselves in writing against effeminacy. But 
with the leave of those who at once complain and 
are proud of the refinement of the age in which 
they live, our civilization is not so extreme as we 
pretend. No state of man has arrived at a proper 
pitch of civilization in which fair play is not attended 
to between its intellectual and corporal faculties. I 
confess, " for my own private eating," I would rather 
have been a citizen of the age of Elizabeth, my 
cheeks glowing not only with beef and pudding, but 
with fresh air and a hundred merry games ; but, 
nevertheless, my content to be a sick author in the 
nineteenth century " hath a preferment in it." I 
think, with a modern philosopher, that we must 
come round again to our gymnastics at last; and, 
when we do this, having meanwhile got our books 
and our love of liberty into the bargain, the world 
will be better off than if London contained the only 
gallant apprentices going, and the rest of Europe 
were full of slavery and superstition. 

Some drawbacks on the health of our ancient 
citizens must not be forgotten. Their streets were 
narrow, which ultimately produced a plague ; and, in 
the time of Henry the Eighth, when Erasmus visited 
England, it appears that the nation who now pride 
themselves above all others on the becoming clean- 
liness of their houses (for Dutch cleanness is dull 
excess), were, — wath humility be it spoken, — one 
of the filthiest under the sun. I cannot refer to the 
passage, but I have a vivid recollection of it. He 
4 



50 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

describes our sitting or dining-rooms as incrusted with 
a mass of dirt and refuse, ill concealed by the rushes 
strewed over it, and never swept away. A sense of 
what is due to humanity ultimately increases in every 
respect with the progress of knowledge ; and this is 
what makes me hope that we shall at last find out 
the secret of being both healthy and wise. 

When Erasmus was in England he lodged in Aus- 
tin Friars. 

Austin Friars, I love thee : and yet it is not for 
this. Still less is it for St. Austin and his brethren ; 
nor yet for thy being so quiet and well-bred a re- 
treat. It is because of the feelings with which I used 
to turn down thine archway, when a boy, to visit 
the family of the T.'s. The T.'s, reader, were among 
the most eminent families in the mercantile world, 
and remain so still. The princely character of the 
English merchant, has perhaps, never been carried 
higher than by some of them. But the charm of a 
respectable English family is ever to be found in- 
doors. The T.'s never forsook the friends they had 
known so long, in spite of politics and misfortune. 
I used to think sometimes that an East India Di- 
rector, who visited them, looked rather askance at 
dinner-time upon the stuff of my school coats; but 
a smile from A. T., or a challenge to a glass of 
wine from the father, who used to sit (to my equal 
veneration and terror), panting with asthma, at the 
head of the table, soon reassured me. As for the 
stranger, privately speaking, I thought that my Hor- 
ace and Demosthenes gave me a right to sit at table 
with any man : and I think so still. To this house, 



THE WISHING-CAP. 5 I 

with its music and its kindness, and to another at 
the other end of the town, where there was a gal- 
lery of pictures, I attribute much of the coloring of 
my after-life, — I mean of my ideas and likings. Both 
had gardens ; the latter of a size as well as tranquil- 
lity enough to surprise a visitor in London (at least, 
it cuts an important figure in my memory), and the 
Drapers' Gardens abutted on it ; so that the imagi- 
nation, in the very midst of the city, reposed on gar- 
den upon garden. But the best thing in the house, 
even better than the matronly grace and kindness of 
the mistress of it, was a little apartment, one of two 
or three which the best-hearted girl upon earth had 
to herself, and to which I used to hasten up with 
my mother before dinner, when there was no music 
practising below. There was a small set of book- 
shelves in it, containing, among other books, the 
Turkish Spy, — a work that used to puzzle me ex- 
ceedingly, and which, I will be bound for it, was as 
great a puzzle to A. [I long to mention her name, 
for it is as feminine and liandsome a one as can be 
conceived, and four syllables long to boot ; but I 
fear to startle the unaffected modesty of the bearer 
with a more public mention than I can help.] This 
place was a little sanctuary in my eyes. It was a 
beautiful sight to see the excellent but care-worn per- 
son that brought me with her met affectionately at 
the door with both outstretched hands of a fine girl 
of eighteen, and served with all the respect and 
attention that could have waited on a princess. I 
wonder how I can write about it with dry eyes. 
Many years afterwards, when the new generation 



52 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

had grown up, and parted different ways, I had the 
pleasure of seeing A. once again (now no longer T.), 
and siiowing her my eldest born, whom I had named 
after her family. Time had not taken away her 
smile.* I might have known her, perhaps, still, not- 
withstanding my politics ; and I have a hundred 
times reproached myself that I did not try. 



No. V. 
WHITEHALL. 

Veterum penetralia regum. — Virgil. 
The insides of the old abodes of kings. 

THE more I loiter about my old places of 
abode, the more I long to stay. What I relate 
has no pretensions to the notice of the antiquary. 
He is acquainted with it already. My antiquities 
are all out of Pennant, with the exception of what I 
glean here and there from the wits and poets. The 
only value of my pictures (if any) is in the coloring, 
and in the figures occasionally introduced. 

Charing Cross was so called from one of the affec- 
tionate memorials set up by Edward the First, in 
honor of places at which his wife's body rested on its 
way to interment at Westminster. The cross here 



* Thornton Leigh Hunt, the "dear little T. H." of Elia's Witches and 
Other Night Fears ; and the subject of one of Lamb's poems. We hope the 
reader is familiar with Leigh Hunt's beautiful lines To T. H. L., Six Years 
Old, during Sickness. — A. T. is Almeria Thornton, of whom and of her 
family there is considerable additional information in The Autobiography of 
Leigh Hunt. — Ed. 



THE WISHING-CAP. 53 

was the last. Its place is now occupied by the statue 
of Charles the First, an unfitting ornament for a free 
city. Indeed it can be considered in no other light 
than that of an insulting rebuke. Nobody is respon- 
sible for the insult now, because it has been of long 
standing ; but the spirit that has maintained and al- 
lowed it is not favorable to liberty, nor just to the 
true spirit of the constitution. The constant assump- 
tion, on the part of this representative of Charles the 
First, of a right to beard it thus ostentatiously among 
the people, and look in a triumphant manner towards 
Whitehall, has its effect, even in stone and brass. 
The forms of encroachment make way for the sub- 
stance. These are the helps to the gradual introduc- 
tion of soldiers, that are now suffered to stand sentinel 
at museums and theatres, certainly in contradiction to 
the spirit of English liberty. A free people ought 
not to be familiarized in this manner with royal dom- 
inations and liveries. There is a bust of Charles the 
First indecently overlooking the avenue to the House 
of Commons.* When the passage was undergoing 
repairs some years back, the bust was missed by a late 
minister, and eagerly inquired after. The workm^en 
satisfied the anxiety of the minister, and all went 
right. Charles's illegal entrance into the House of, 
Commons, with the intention of seizing the five mem- 
bers (the proceeding which afterwards brought him 
to the block), rendered his appearance in such a quar- 
ter still more insulting. It is true, there are statues 
in other places, of princes of the house that displaced 

* This bust does not appear to have been put up in Pennant's time. He 
speaks of it as existing, but not in its present situation. It would be curious to 
know who put it there. 



54 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

his family. In Russell Square we have even a Whig; 
nobleman and a Whig statesman. But Charles's 
statue is the most conspicuous and in the most con- 
spicuous and crowded place of any in London ; and 
Charles Fox would not be allowed to confront him 
in the Parliament Avenue, where he has at least as 
much right to appear. Even a Whig sovereign is not 
allowed to see fair play ; which is surely unthankful 
in one quarter, and not eminently unslavish in anoth- 
er. In a thoroughfare behind Whitehall (skulking out 
of sight, but " insinuated," as it were, " into the 
boxes " ) is a statue of James the Second ! 

All the noble thoroughfare, now called Whitehall, 
with the buildings on either side, extended along the 
river as far as Scotland Yard on one side, and up to 
the street turning into Spring Gardens on the other, 
occupies the ground of the immense palace formerly 
existing under the same name. It was begun by the 
Earl of Kent in the reign of the third Henry, and be- 
came the palace of the Archbishops of York, and the 
residence of Wolsey. It is the scene of the masquer- 
ade in Henry the Eighth. A great masquerade has 
been played there by Time. Here Wolsey, that mag- 
nificent "Jack-priest of the world," displayed his 
pomps and vanities, grew fat and diseased with de- 
bauchery, gave out imperial healths in his gold cups ; 
and at last burst like a bubble. Henry condescended 
sto buy the house, and went swelling both it and him- 
self in his turn, till he became too fat to write his 
name.* The various exercises which he pursued in 

* An historical fact. He had a seal made to stamp with instead, and must 
be imagined moving his body and arm round to achieve the signature, like a 
porpoise with something stuck in his fin. 



THE WISHING-CAP. 55 

this place (for there were a tennis-court, tilting-yard, 
cock-pit, and bowHng-green, and he was fond of 
robust games) appear to have only been made subser- 
vient to the prodigiousness of his appetites. Eating 
and drinking, gallantry and divinity, he fell to them 
all with the thirsty self-will and iron nerves of an 
athlete ; only his divinity made him careful to marry 
before he murdered.* 

The pomps and vanities of Elizabeth were better 
warranted, though she lectured a bishop out of her 
pew for alluding to them. Her three thousand dress- 
es (for such was the number found in her wardrobe) 
have almost as many excuses, when we recollect what 
a noise she made as queen and woman, and what a 
number of high and gallant tastes were prepared to 
admire her. It is true, she had " too much sense," 
was '' too great a queen," &c., but in these matters 
too much sense is very apt not to be enough ; nor do 
we find that women, or even men, of the greatest 
and gravest sense, are above the little artifices that 



* Fuller, in his Church History, tells a good story of Henry the Eighth and 
his fool. "King Henry," says the old divine, "had lately set forth a book 
against Luther, endeavoring the confutation of his opinions as novel and un- 
sound." None suspect this king's lack of learning (though many his lack of lei- 
sure from his pleasures) for such a design ; however, it is probable some o Jier 
GARDENER gathered the flowers (made the collectionsX though King Henry 
had the honor to wear the posy, carrying the credit in the title thereof 

To requite his paihs the pope honored him and his successors with a specious 
title, "A Defender of the Faith." . . . There is a tradition, that King 
Henry's fool (though more truly to be termed by another name), coming into 
the court, and finding the king transported with an unusual joy, boldly asked of 
him the cause thereof; to whom the king answered, it was because that the pope 
had honored him with a style more eminent than any of his ancestors. " O, good 
Harry," quoth the fool, "let thou and I defend one another, and let the faith 
alone to defend itself" — Ed. 



56 THE WrSHING-CAP PAPERS. 

help to set off their persons. Age and misfortune 
make a difference, but the misfortune must be new 
indeed that diminishes the vanity of a throne. In 
those times pomp and splendor were thought to 
belong as much to the person of the sovereign as 
the state ; though nothing, it must be confessed, was 
omitted or discontinued that could bring round the 
world to a different v/ay of thinking. Here, in the 
tilt-yard at Whitehall, did Elizabeth, " in her sixty- 
fifth year, wrinkled face, red periwig, little eyes, 
hooked nose, skinny lips, and black teeth," pre- 
side over the chivalrous exercises, and receive the 
homage of her gallant knights, who stormed alle- 
gorical forts to get at her " beauty," and died in 
all sorts of eloquent despairs if she averted the heav- 
en of her looks. It was a set of poetical grown chil- 
dren " making believe," and more grave and self-de- 
ceiving than smaller ones. For we must not suppose 
that the self-deception was confined to Elizabeth. 
Her adoring courtiers would marry secretly against 
her will, and occasionally be moved into a prosaical 
sense of her age and her skinny lips ; but one charm 
stands instead of another, and serves the latter with 
its own results. Elizabeth being a great queen, and 
able to gratify ever in so many ways the self-love of 
her admirers, would remain an attractive woman 
long after all pretensions had ceased in any other 
station. Wit and good nature have done as much for 
women ; and even deformity has been held by some a 
fascination ; so much has mere sensation to do in 
most extreme cases, beyond any other impulse. 
James the First, that slatternly pedant and very ill- 



THE WISHING-CAP. 57 

contrived personage, kept up the spectacles of the tilt- 
yard, and was the cause of much finery in others. 
But the great patron of martial exercises was his son 
Henry. After the filial fashion of heirs apparent, 
Henry affected a policy quite opposite to that of 
his father ; and, like all heirs apparent who die 
before they come to the throne, was a popular and 
hopeful prince. It is to James the First the public are 
indebted for the noble banqueting-house built by Inigo 
Jones. I have sometimes stood and looked at it till I 
thought that, by one of the hidden analogies between 
the fine arts, the beautiful proportions of the upper 
part of the front affected me like a piece of music. 
Let the reader stand and measure with his eye the pro- 
portions between the windows and the spaces about 
them, and imagine this or that part to be contracted 
or enlarged, and he will feel how injurious would be 
the alteration. The glory of Whitehall was at its 
height in the time of James and Charles the First; 
Inigo Jones built for the court, Rubens and Vandyke 
painted for it,* and Ben Jonson wrote for it. Roy- 
alty had not found out its weak side, nor learnt to be- 
come jealous of natural greatness. Genius was 
thought only an accessary to " the fair State," and was 
allowed to put forth its full lustre. Louis the Four- 
teenth told Boileau that he had always a quarter of 
an hour to spare for his conversation whenever he 
chose to visit the court. And this was thought a won- 

* Holbein was employed at Whitehall under the Tudors. He died there of 
the plague, and is supposed to have been buried in the churchyard belonging 
to St. Catherine Cree, near the India House. Vandyke also died in England^ 
and was buried in Old St. Paul's. The Academy should give him a monument 
in the New. 



58 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

derful favor ; and so it was, as times went ; yet what 
was it more than a good bargain made for himself by 
a dull gentleman with a man of wit? This, however, 
was nothing to poor Racine, who languished like a 
lily and died, because the king was displeased with 
him. — Painting is still more welcome at court than 
poetry. Poets, with all their flattery, have arrogant 
ways ; assume crowns of laurel, and talk of bestow- 
ing immortality. They jostle the sovereign in his 
throne with another sovereignty, which is of a suspi- 
cious character, and disdains the common fashions 
of mortality. But painting takes its place as part of 
the show. It offers the most visible and ornamental 
display of genius with the least pretensions to it, and 
with the greatest flattery to places and persons ; and 
accordingly has always been welcome. Even an 
American and half Republican (the late Mr. West) 
was liked at Windsor ; though perhaps there was a 
particular zest in having an American for a royal 
painter. In the time of the Stuarts there was a gen- 
erosity in the treatment of artists, which argued much 
for the intelligence of the patrons. 

Rubens (who was employed in negotiations) car- 
ried his art with such a high hand, that it seems 
doubtful whether he was an ambassador condescend- 
ing to be an artist, or an artist submitting to be an 
ambassador. His pupil Vandyke married the daugh- 
ter of a British earl. It has been said that architec- 
ture was not appreciated, though good architects were 
employed. The court had the good fortune to light 
on a man of genius ; but his pay, they say, shows 
what was thought of his art. Now it is true that 



THE WISHING-CAP. 59 

Inigo Jones, as Surveyor of the Works, had but eight 
and four pence a day, and forty-six pounds per annum 
for house rent, a clerk, and extras. But it remains to 
be shown how long he was occupied in the business 
of his office. Genius deserves all it can get ; but it 
may be countenanced in a variety of ways ; and if it 
grow wealtliy at last, as Inigo did, nobody can com- 
plain. The royal countenance procured him a great 
deal of employment, and Ben Jonson accuses him 
of thinking himself of so much importance as to aspire 
to be made a marquis. The jealous poet, whose 
masques he ornamented too well with his machinery, 
condescended to write a satire, in which he reproaches 
him with commencing life with " forty pounds a year 
in pipkins." Jones might have had a large sum of 
money given him for every design ; but his profits 
would then have become enormous, and beyond all 
proportion. There appears to be considerable justice, 
upon the whole, in the treatment which genius ex- 
periences from the world. Fashion may overdo the 
thing one way, and superiority to a man's age be a 
drawback another ; but there is fair play in the main. 
An architect is obliged to get money, like a builder ; 
but he has the honor besides, and more profit. The 
painter, though he has workmen also in his pupils, 
labors hard himself, and gets profit in the same 
manner. Rubens had three thousand pounds for 
painting the ceiling of the Banqueting-house. The 
poet is apt to get least of all ; but this is owing partly 
to the causes before alluded to, and partly to the 
greater volatility of his temperament. He is not so 
accommodating to others, nor so prudent in himself. 



6o THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

He takes a wider range of thought and imagination, 
gets more pleasure in that airy circle, and if he gets 
more sorrows likewise, looks for a more exalted fame, 
and feels himself to be one of the dictators of poster- 
ity. If all this does not make up to him for what he 
endures, the nature of things renders it necessary that 
more good should be got out of him than out of any 
other artist, because all the world can read books and 
profit by them ; whereas few of us can see fine pic- 
tures ; and fine architecture is still rarer, and of less 
importance. The poet must content himself with the 
noble fatality of liis destiny, and look for reward 
elsewhere. It is his sympathies with the many that 
keeps him poor, — the most honorable of all poverties. 
It is clear, from all history, that great poets might 
be as rich as any other men of genius ; but they have 
always some starting-point in them, tangible in some 
way or other, to the demands of the many, and 
liable to carry them ofi' from their success. This 
was the case with Dante, Petrarch, and Milton, with 
Spenser (though his sympathy took an awkward di- 
rection, and must needs subject him to the anger of 
the Irish), with Chaucer, who got into a four years' 
imprisonment in his old age for being a Wickliffite, 
with the patriot Greek poets, and more or less with 
almost every poet of eminence. Even the best cour- 
tiers among them contrive to remain poor. A dra- 
matist has the best chance ; for the wider his sympa- 
thy, the greater chance the pit have of liking him ; 
and it was a theatre that made Shakespeare rich. 

The lamentation respecting the little pay to court 
architects — (I believe there is no such lamentations 



THE WISHING-CAP. 6 1 

now, whoever the architects may be) — has been re- 
newed in speaking of Sir Christopher Wren. The 
salary of this excellent person ••' for building St. Paul's 
from the foundation, was not more (as appears from 
the public accounts) than two hundred pounds per 
annum ; his allowance for building all the parochial 
churches of the city of London was about a hundred 
per annum, and the same for the repairs of Westmin- 
ster Abbey ; he was director and chief architect of the 
Royal Hospital at Greenwich, gratis^ and cheerfully 
contributed to that work his time, labor, and skill for 
several years, without salary, emolument, or reward ; 
preferring in this, as in every other passage of his 
life, the public service to his own private advantage." 
(Seward's Anecdotes, quoted by Dr. Drake in the 
notes to his interesHng edition of the Tatler, vol. ii., 
p. 13.) This looks formidable enough. It is true 
that sovereigns are fond of cheap payments for ever}^- 
body but themselves ; but still, if the art they counte- 
nance is such a one as fashion and private interest 
can employ, the artist stands a good chance of be- 
coming rich. Sir Christopher, I believe, did so in 
spite of the time he spent in drawing plans for gov- 
ernment. He was a member of the House of Com- 
mons in two Parliaments. 

It is generally supposed that Charles the First went 
to the scaffold through one of the front windows of 
the Banqueting-house. But he came out at the north 
side. Pennant informs us that a passage was bro- 
ken on purpose. It was remaining in his time, " and 
was a door to a ssnall additional building of late 
date." Most likely it is still in being. This was the 



63 



THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 



hour of Charles's life which did him most credit. 
Cromwell might have envied it at the close of his 
usurpation. Marvel 1, a lover of liberty, has done it 
justice : — 

"He nothing common did, or mean, 
Upon that memorable scene, 
But with his keener eye 
The axe's edge did try ; 
Nor called the gods with vulgar spite 
To vindicate his helpless right, 
But bowed his comely head 
Down as upon a bed. " 

When will a court-poet write such verses upon a 
freeman? 

After a "sullen interval" on the part of Cromwell 
(who nevertheless got softened by the court air, drank 
his wine freely, and had " cunning musicians " to play 
and vsing to him),* in came " Bacchus and his Revel- 
lers," — Rochester's wits and Grammont's maids of 
honor. Charles the Second, who somehow or other, 
has contrived to be a favorite with some very regu- 
lar moralists as well as politicians, — Sir Walter 
Scott, for instance, and Dr. Johnson, — had in fact 
many excuses for his general conduct, setting aside 
even the usual indulgence allowed to kings in mat- 
ters of pleasure. He had gone through a series of 
early experiences, very imperious to a sense of the 
dignity and hopefulness of human nature. The 
sharpness of adversity, joined to his natural acute- 
ness, must often have enabled him to see too far 



* Cromwell took delight in a good voice, and had a church organ, which the 
Puritans put down at Oxford, privately set up for his amusement at one of the 
palaces. 



THE WISHING-CAP. 6^ 

• 

even into the spirit of loyalty, which did him such 
romantic services. His little court, while in exile, 
was a perpetual scene of jealousies and complaints ; 
and the sudden tide of homage and popularity which 
rushed to meet him on the change of his fortune 
must have contributed to give no pleasanter turn to 
the early furrows cut in his face by doubt and anx- 
iety. He is called '' the merry monarch ; " but mirth 
in him, as in many others, was set off by a ground 
of melancholy. The French vivacity and voluptu- 
ousness which he inherited on the mother's side, 
had a certain hang-dog contradiction in it derived 
from his father. He loved repose still better than 
enjoyment. " Sauntering," said one of his compan- 
ions, " was the true sultana queen he delighted in." 
He was often seen in the Park, accompanied by his 
dogs, and feeding the ducks he kept there ; and he 
would chat familiarly with the people, which made 
them love him. In Pennant's London is a picture 
of the then state of the parade and horse-guards, 
with his majesty, attended by his peers and his 
puppies. 

Most of Charles's mistresses had lodgings within 
the precincts of Whitehall. It was one enormous 
magazine of princes and their household officers, civil 
and military, cooks, wine-cellars, bowling-greens, ten- 
nis-grounds, pimps, gamesters, lords and ladies of 
all sorts. Dryden, in an epilogue written the year be- 
fore his death, though he appears always to have re- 
tained a liking for his old master and his '* fair words," 
does not mend the matter. Speaking of the licen- 
tiousness of that time, he says, — 



64 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

"The sin was of our native growth, 'tis true ; 
The scandal of the sin was wholly new. 
Misses they Vvfere, but modestly concealed ; 
Whitehall the naked Venus first revealed. 
Who, standing as at Cyprus, in her shrine. 
The strumpet was adored with rites divine." 

The scandal drew in its horns in the time of James 
the Second, who had more of the Jesuit in him ; but 
the time was now approaching when the bustle of 
Whitehall was to be broken up, and the place no 
longer to be a seat of royalty. James was obliged to 
write a letter to his invader, William, inviting him to 
take up his abode at St. James's. The invitation was 
accepted, and his majesty in return advised to take 
his departure from Whitehall. William the Third 
resided in other palaces ; and the only visible part 
now remaining of the old establishment is the Ban- 
queting-house, which has long been converted into a 
chapel. 

No. VT. 

ST. JAMES'S PARK. 

" TN the time of King Henry the Eighth," says a 
X note to Dr. King's poems, in Mr. Chalmers's 
collection, " the park was a wild^ wet field ; but 
that prince, on building St. James's Palace, en- 
closed it, laid it out in walks, and collecting the 
waters together, gave to the new enclosed ground 
and new-raised buildings the name of St. James's. 
It was much enlarged by Charles the Second ; who 
added to it several fields, planted it with rows of 



THE WISHING-CAP. 65 

lime trees, laid out the mall, formed the canal with 
a decoy, and other ponds for water-pool. The lime 
trees, or tilia^ whose blossoms are uncommonly fra- 
grant, were probably planted inconsequence of a sug- 
gestion of Mr. Evelyn, in his FuDiifuglum^ published 
in 1661." 

Charles the Second was very fond of the Park. His 
habit of walking there, attended b}^ his dogs, both 
sad and merry, has been noticed before. His ducks, 
which he also amused himself with feeding, inhab- 
ited a spot called Duck Island, which was erected 
into a " government," in order to furnish the French 
exile and wit, St. Evremond, with a pension. Bird- 
cage Walk must not be forgotten, which was an 
aviary of Charles's raising, and retains its appella- 
tion. Waller speaks of the improvements of St. 
James's Park in the gratuitous style of a poet. The 
libertines of the court were to sport about the canal, 
like the harmless wantons of a golden age ;* while 
Charles walks among the trees in all the dignity of a 
Numa, and settles the destinies of the world : — 

" Methinks I see the love that shall be made, 
The lovers walking in that amorous shade : 
The gallants dancing by the river side ; 
They bathe in summer, and in winter slide. 
Methinks I hear the music in the boats, 
And the loud Echo which returns the notes ; 
While overhead a flock of new-sprung fowl 
Hangs in the air, and does the sun control ; 
Dark'ning the sky, they hover o'er, and shroud 
The wanton sailors with a feather'd cloud. 
Beneath, a shoal of silver fishes glides, 
And plays about the gilded barges' sides : 
The ladies angling in the crystal lake. 
Feast on the waters with the prey they take ; 
At once victorious with their lines and eyes, 
They make the fishes and the men their prize." 



66 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

The vigor with which the king plays at mall is 
then doted on ; and the poet proceeds in some strik- 
ing verses : — 

" Near this, my Muse, what most delights her, sees 
A living gallery of aged trees ; 
Bold sons of earth, that thrust their arms so high. 
As if once more they would invade the sky. 
In such green palaces the first kings reigned, 
Slept in their shades, and angels entertained : 
With such old counsellors they did advise. 
And by frequenting sacred groves t^rew wise. 
Free from the impediments of light and noise, 
Man, thus retir'd, his nobler thoughts employs. 
Here Charles contrives the ordering of his states, 
Here he resolves his neighboring princes' fates : 
What nation shall have peace, where war be made, 
Determined is in this oraculous shade." 

Again, in some verses not so good : — 

" Here, like the people's pastor, he does go, 
His flock subjected to his view below : 
On which reflecting in his mighty mind, 
No private passion does indulgence find : 
The pleasures of his youth suspended are, 
.\nd made a sacrifice to public care. 
Here, free from court compliances, he walks, 
And with himself, his best adviser, talks : 
How peaceful olive may his temples shade. 
For mending, and for restoring trade : 
Or, how his brows may be with laurels charg'd, 
For nations conquer'd and our bounds enlarg'd." 

Alas, it should have been, — 

" For pensions taken, and for France enlarg'd." 

All that his majesty thought of " in this oraculous 
shade," was how to pass his time and get money for 
his pleasures. 

" Methinks I see the love that shall be made." 

This it was more easy for our grave poet to predicate. 
The Park is the scene of some of the most libertine 



THE WISHING-CAP. 6"] 

plays of that period. I do not know where the Mul- 
berry Garden stood, which gives a title to one of the 
comedies of Sedley ; perhaps on the site of Spring 
Garden, which was a place of entertainment up to a 
late period. The milk fresh from the cow, which is 
still sold under the trees at the entrance from that 
quarter, and which has a pleasing effect on emerging 
from the streets, appears to be a remnant of the for- 
mer traffic. 

Marlborough House, now the residence of Prince 
Leopold, was one of the national acknowledgments 
to the Duke of Marlborough. It was built partly in a 
garden belonging to the queen. Her majesty had thus 
her defender and her old friend the duchess by her 
side ; and on the other side, in the palace still called by 
his name, lived her old friend and admirer (who, they 
say, courted her in his youth,) Sheffield, Duke of 
Buckingham. He married her sister, natural child of 
James the Second by the daughter of Sir Charles Sed- 
ley. Sheffield built the mansion and laid out the 
garden. He adorned the four sides of the house w^ith 
inscriptions, one of which is much to the purpose : 
'' Fastidiosus spectator sibi molestus," — "A fastid- 
ious spectator is his owji annoyance." This is the 
nobleman of whom the Tatler speaks as the " Duke 
that lives at Marylebone." A strange story is related 
in Pennant, of his giving a dinner to "the most in- 
famous sharpers of the time," who gambled at that 
place, and of a toast with which he concluded it: 
" May as many of us as remain unhanged next spring, 
meet here again." " I remember," says Pennant, 
" the facetious Qinn telling this story at Bath, within 
hearing of the late Lord Chesterfield, when his lord- 



68 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

ship was surrounded by a crowd of worthies of the 
same stamp with the above." I cannot help thinking 
that the company was more suited to the author of the 
Letters than the writer of the Minor Poems. Sheffield 
is one of the " twinkling stars " in the Miscellanies, and 
has a lurking goodness in the midst of his libertinism. 
He has been accused of pride and arrogance ; but 
they say he was amiable in private. His sharping 
connections do not look like the man of whom his 
widow speaks so highly in his Remains ; but it is 
astonishing what strange things come together in 
high life, and with what accommodating philosophy 
the great regard their own contradictions. The lie 
on which their pretensions are founded is the cause 
of it, and renders it in a certain degree excusable. 
A man cannot well feel that the world would consent 
to make distinctions that have no real existence, with 
impunity. 

St. James's Palace was built by Henry the Eighth, on 
the site of an ancient hospital for lepers. The name 
was the name of the hospital. The palace was 
fitted up by William for the Princess Anne and her 
husband, Prince George of Denmark. She retained 
it as her residence when queen, and it has since been 
the headquarters of the British Court. Pennant says, 
that although the outside is unsightly, it is the most 
convenient palace for regal parade of any in Europe. 
There were some interesting pictures there in his 
time, probably still remaining. One of them was 
" the diminutive Manhood of Geoffi-ey Hudson." * 

* Scott introduced Geoffrey or Jeffrey Hudson into Peveril of the Peak. He 
also honors the little man with a long note, to which we refer the curious reader. 
— Ed. 



THE WISHING-CAP. 69 

" Here," says Pennant, " is to be seen the famous pic- 
ture by Mabuse, of Adam and Eve. Mr. Evelyn 
justly remarks the absurdity of painting them with 
navels and a fountain of* rich imagery amidst the 
beauteous wilds of Paradise. Raphael and Michael 
Angelo made the same mistake of the navel, on which 
the learned Sir Thomas Browne wastes a long page 
and a half to disprove the possibility." With the 
leave of these worthy gentlemen, and of the profound 
theosophist, Raphael and Michael Angelo knew more 
about these navel affliirs than they. The fountain is 
not so well; but (not to say anything of what is im- 
possible to Omnipotence), Adam and Eve were 
bound to be complete specimens of the human race ; 
patterns and prototypes, as well as progenitors. As 
they anticipated our growth, so they anticipated all 
the rest of us : — 

' ' Adam the goodliest man of men since born 
His sons, the fairest of her daughters Eve." * 

The goodliness of the picture desiderated by Mr. Eve- 
lyn and Sir Thomas, I leave all people of taste to 
imagine. 

In books of fifty and a hundred years back, if you 
meet wn'th a hungry gentleman who did not know 
where to get a dinner, you always find him sitting on 
a bench in the Park. Others generally accompany 
him, most of whom are politicians. Bickerstaff meets 
here his acquaintance the upholsterer, who lets his 
affairs run to ruin in his zeal for the KinsT of Swe- 



* See South's remarkable sermon on The Creation of Man in God's Image. 
He says that " an Aristotle was but th^^ rubbish of an Adam.'*'' — Ed. 



70 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

den.* People do not appear so patient nowadays 
to hunger and thirst, though their poHtics are more 
zealous than ever. In sympathizing with the world 
at large, instead of confining themselves to be tragedy 
spectators of royalty, they have learned to include 
their own rights. They may die by other means, 
they may be ruined by a bankruptcy, or be hacked and 
hewed by a series of disappointed hopes ; but till they 
are fairly put an end to, they claim the common priv- 
ilege of eating their breakfast and dinner. Besides, 
others would not let them want a dinner. Revolutions 
have produced a tendency to diminish the extent of 
royal kitchens, but only that »the superflux may be 
shaken to the many. Rabelais would delight to see 
Gargantua no longer considered as everybody. The 
two pilgrims, whom he ate in a salad, would in these 
times have at least made considerable objections. 

It would appear, from novels, that the Park enjoyed 
some privileges from arrest. In Fielding's Amelia, 
if I remember, the hero often walks in the Mall, 
when he can go nowhere else. During the exist- 
ence of the old Cathedral of St. Paul's, the inside of 
that church was the resort of the hungry ; who, in 



* The character of the political upholsterer is by Addison ; it is one of the 
happiest of his contributions to the Tatler. "We should hope," says Hazlitt, 
in the Round Table, "the upholsterer and his companions in the Green Park 
stand as fair a chance for immortality as some modern politicians." Beau Tibbs 
was fond of sauntering in St. James's Park, now in rags, now in embroidery ; 
and hither came Miss Hannah (another of Goldsmith's characters), to show her 
finery and criticise die finery of others. Itwas in St. James's Park that the free- 
holder saw his friend the Tory fox-hunter feeding the ducks. If the reader is un- 
acquainted with this masterpiece of humorous characterizduon,he should forthwith 
take down his Addison, and read the three little papers on the fox-hunter, in the 
Freeholder. — Ed. 



THE WISHING-CAP. 7 1 

allusion to a tomb supposed to contain the body of 
Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, gave rise to the say- 
ing of dining with Duke Humphrey. 

The Mall is so called from the game of mall to which 
Waller alludes. Charles the Second transferred it from 
Pall Mall. It is a great pity that these and similar 
exercises have been left off. Without canting about 
the degeneracy of the times, it is a reasonable deduc- 
tion, from our abandonment of healthy and manly 
games, that we are an inferior race to our ancestors 
in point of bodily grace and vigor. 

In a house looking into Mr. Bentham's garden, in 
Bird-cage Walk, lived Milton. The front of it is in 
York Street, and, without being the ancient one, is in 
very squalid condition. If it had a new face and an 
inscription, which it surely deserves, it would turn to 
better account for all parties. There used to be a 
bust on the other side, which we believe Mr. Ben- 
tham put up. But it is not the custom of that emi- 
nent person to monopolize a good thing, and he ought 
to let as many people know of the house as possible. 
It is the privilege of Westminster to exhibit a spirit 
of liberty proportionate to the encroachments of the 
other power that lives there. 

The Horse-Guards were in poor condition in the 
time of Charles. The stables looked like the open 
corridors of an old inn ; and a toy of a building, with 
staircase outside, appears to have been the Guard 
House. These conclusions are drawn from the print 
in Pennant. I thought the design of the present 
building was by Vanbrugh ; but Pennant says he be- 
lieves it was the work of an architect of the name of 



72 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

Vardy. The structure is not older than the reign of 
George the Second. There is something fantastic in 
the custom of setting two soldiers on horseback to 
mount guard in those tenements at the entrance, like 
a couple of live statues. But they are fine specimens 
of the weight and steadiness of a pair of English 
dragoons, and keep a gravity becoming their situa- 
tions. Some say they have been seen eating pud- 
ding and apples ; but this is what I will not believe. 

The band on parade is worth hearing. They play 
some of the best pieces of Mozart and Haydn, which 
the wind carries hither and thither in triumph. I 
remember taking home to school the air of Non piu 
andrai^ long before I knew the name of Mozart. 
Here war is to be seen under its most harmless aspect, 
with its fringes, its colors, and its gallant sounds. It 
is all holiday play and gentle service ; a business of 
steppings and salutations. The band-major looks 
grave and ruling ; the blacks toss up their cymbals in 
the sun ; the little triangle-boys emulate their long 
legs ; the officers step along, very gentlemanly ; the 
companies tread solidly at their elbows, like bodies 
with their soul beside them ; the young ensign is ad- 
mired in the middle, carrying his colors like a flutter- 
ing heart. Anon, the noble instruments give way to 
the drum and fife, and the regiment proceeds for the 
court-yard in a livelier and more familiar step. Dui'- 
ing the parade, a trumpet and a stir of cavalry are 
heard ; and a fine troop of dragoons issue forth on 
their long-tailed black liorses, the trumpeter on a 
white one blowing his trumpet, which mingles w^ith 
the instruments of the foot, and makes a gallant con- 



THE WISHING-CAP. 73 

fusion. Who would not then be a soldier, and dic- 
tate to the world? Certainly if war is a necessary 
evil, it is pranked up and recommended to us in the 
best possible manner. Nature will do her utmost 
to gild her bitterest pills. In one point of view, 
what can be more silly than those gay and self-satis- 
fied persons, marching away, in the long run, to have 
their throats cut, and their heads blown to atoms .'^ 
But in another, what can be more reconciling in its 
necessity.? What more calculated to bring tears of 
mingled pity and admiration in our eyes? What bet- 
ter way could have been found out to enlist the 
superfluous part of society into its roughest and most 
dangerous service? I am no disciple of Mr. Mal- 
thus. He either cannot, or, being a clergyman, dare 
not handle the real question, which I think it re- 
quires no great knowledge of economy to see into. 
But wars have long been a part of the history of 
mankind, and most have been the necessary result 
of some modification of its manners. It does not 
follow that the necessity is to exist forever, or that 
the alternative is the one he speaks of. The present 
forms of societv must be broken up, and the whole 
earth properly cultivated, before he has a right to 
argue that there is not enough for all, much less 
that war is necessary to prevent the redundance 
of population. See what Mr. Hazlitt has said on 
the subject at the end of his Political Essays. In 
the mean time an end is not likely to be put to 
war by making mere representations of its misery, 
however just. God knows they cannot well be ex- 
aggerated. See, for one instance, worth a thousand, a 



74 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

note to a certain Ode to Horror, in the works of the 
Poet Laureate, the Pilgrim to Waterloo. The point 
is to keep our reasoning faculties on the alert, — our 
liberties of thinking and speaking; and to enable our- 
selves to detest sophistry and time-serving. One 
sound philosophical discovery goes farther towards 
the alteration of societ}^ than millions of complaints. 
The danger of these is, that the very suffering will 
be glad to relieve itself, and run into the gayety of de- 
spair. It is our business to keep ourselves in heart, 
as far as a present necessity goes, and in health of mind 
not to be imposed upon beyond the necessity. 



No. VII. 
SPRING. 

Ah, happy hills ! ah, pleasing shade ! 
Ah, fields, beloved in vain ! — Gray.' 

HAIL, beautiful season ! hail, return of the green 
leaves ! hail, violets, daisies, and buttercups I 
hail, blue sky ; and ye, white little silver clouds, 
" gay creatures of the elements," the posterity of 
your turbid sires of winter time ! 

Hail, moreover, ye evidences of spring, even in 
cities ! Hail, green in the windows, and on the 
ladies' caps ! Hail, coats instead of great-coats ! 
Hail, beaux and other butterflies ! Hail, the leaving 
off of fires ; provided, dear fires, among my country- 
men, ye are left oflT! Great encroachers upon sum- 



THE WISHING-CAP. 75 

mer time are ye ; mighty disputers of the sunshine 
with May and June ! 

There is a tendency all over the temperate part of 
Europe to anticipate the beauties of spring, — to 
fancy the season more forward than it is, or to com- 
plain that it is otherwise. I find this in Italy as well 
as in England. Horace Walpole said that it was the 
fashion to say there was no winter in Italy. There 
is certainly a winter sharp enough to startle foreign- 
ers ; and the spring in Tuscany is far from prema- 
ture. I have not found the weather in either season 
different from what Horace says of the snows in 
winter, and Virgil of the stormy showers in spring. 
The Prj?navera, or spring of the Italian poets, dis- 
appoints expectation as much as the Aprils and 
Mays described by our own. Prhnavera comes in 
March, and is properly the first part of the vernal 
season, the ver j)7'i7nuin of the Latins. The blossom 
issues forth on the trees, the cranes are seen travel- 
ling in the sky, the hedges are lively with violets 
and periwinkles ; but it is not a season warranting 
what the poets say of it, and warming the blood. 
Cold winds prevail, as with us ; the snows, lingering 
on the mountains, embitter them, and the rains are vi- 
olent. April commences the true poetical spring, and 
May is spring confirmed, the real season of the " ?to- 
velli a7nori" the May of the British poets. Whether 
the seasons alter from time to time in different parts 
of the world is a point contested. Most likely they 
do. But, for a long time past, the May of our poets 
is rather June, and very often the middle and end of 
June rather than the beginning. For many years it 



76 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

has been common to have fires as late as tlie old> 
King's birthday, the 4th of June. What we call 
spring is indeed spriitg^ literally speaking ; and a 
very beautiful idea the word gives us. The ver of the 
ancients appears to have meant the rising of the sap. 
Our Saxon term is more lively and visible. It is not 
merely the life, but the leaping of the season ; the 
gladness of its pulse. And yet the vivacity belongs 
rather to nature than to us. We have not got rid 
enough of our colds and clothings. 

If the season is very fine indeed, the true time of 
enjoyment in England is the one that Thomson has 
selected for his Bower of Indolence, — 

" A season at ween June and May, 
Half prankt with spring, with summer half embrown'd." 

When the spring came this year in Tuscany, it was a 
great pleasure to me to see the corn, wine, and oil, all 
preparing to flourish together, — for the fields are 
nothing else. What are meadows and cornfields in 
England, are orchards full of olives and vines in Tus- 
cany, with the corn growing betwixt them. The 
green corn running in close stripes among the olive 
trees, and the preparations for the budding of the 
vines, — it being the custom here to make trellises 
of reed-work, really elegant in many parts of the 
hedges, — furnish a lively spectacle. But spring, as 
well as winter, made me think of home. I put on 
my Cap, and pitched myself in those delicious fields, 
all over daisies and buttercups, which go sloping 
from Hampstead to West End and Kilburn, — fields, 
the representatives of thousands of others all over 



THE WISHING-CAP. 77 

England, and in which I would rather take a walk 
" atween June and May " than in the divinest spot 
recorded by the divinest of southern poets. It is 
common with persons in love to fancy that everybody 
must be happy wdio lives in the society of the object 
of their attachment. In the same manner, when I 
am compelled to forego the privileges of my Cap, and 
confine myself to wishing without enjoying (which 
is sometimes the case), I cannot help envying the 
reader for his power to go into the places I write of. 
I say to myself, " Now somebody will take it into his 
head to go and look at those fields, or he will go and 
look at those he is more acquainted with ; or he will, 
or he can^ go into some English field or other, rich 
with grass and pov^dered with flowers. He will see 
the hedges ; he will see the elms and oaks (there are 
no elms and oaks here). He will, or he may and 
can, or might, could, would, should walk in a wood 
full of them. Furthermore, he will meet with some 
old friends." 

Reader, if there is any man who has offended you, 
and whom you find it hard to forgive, forgive him, I 
entreat you ; for I forgive you, and you are the most 
provoking person I have known a long time. I could 
knock the paper out of your hand. Don't you sit 
giggling there, you other reader, C. L., A. B., or 
C, or whatever title pleased thy godfather's ear. 
Conscious of your power to take a long walk through 
the sun and dust, you take advantage of my weakness 
to triumph over me. But, lo ! my Wishing-Cap is on 
me in all its glory. The very mention of your name 
makes me present. I am with you ; walk with you, 



78 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

talk with you. It was I who sighed just now while 
you were reading. — Reader, we are reconciled and 
together. 

Fortunately I am not of a temper to make the 
worst of any situation I happen to be cast in. And 
I look upon it as a reward for my love of Nature that 
I have never been in a situation in which I had not 
some glimpse of her to console me. Even in prison 
I had a little garden to myself, and raised my own 
heart's-ease. It may not be the most grateful thing 
in the world to think of a jail while strolling about 
the most classical ground in Tuscany. I confess I 
think of it very often. But Nature will excuse me, 
because my dejection is owing to my love. If I had 
not loved her so much at home, I should not miss, as 
I do, the old homestead. I do what I can. I think 
of Petrarch and Boccaccio, of Milton and Galileo, and 
Fiesole, which I see from my window, and which is 
a common boundary to my walks. I endeavor to 
keep the vines and the olive trees new to me. Be- 
sides Virgil and the Italy of books, I make the olives 
remind me of Athens, of Plato, and Homer, and Soph- 
ocles, and Socrates, and a still more reverend Name in 
another country, who went up into a mount of olives 
to pray. A Dominican convent is a little in my way, 
with its inscription in honor of the fiery saint, "the 
destroyer of heretics ; " but the friars no longer in- 
habit it, and I endeavor to consider even the Inqui- 
sition as a violent note struck in the ears of mankind 
to make them attend to the doctrine it contradicted. 
Philosophy has separated the doctrine from its abuse, 
and the Inquisition is no more. I think of the gayer 



THE WISmXG-CAP. 79 

sort of abuses, the red side of their cheek, the jollity 
of a refectory. Pope's picture is before me, of 

" Happy convents, buried deep in vines, 
Where slumber abbots purple as their wines," 

(A couplet as plump and painted as the subject.) The 
transition to Horace and Anacreon is a pleasing ne- 
cessity. I am in the very thick of the vines of Redi, 
the author of the Bacchus in Tuscany. His Bac- 
chus is as flourishing a god as ever, and sworn by as 
devoutly, though the saints have displaced his image. 
Florence, at a little distance, meets the turn of my 
eye at every opening of the trees. In short, I am in 
a world of poetry and romance, of vines and olives, 
and myrtles (which grow wild), of blue mountains 
and never-ending orchards, with a beautiful city in 
the middle of it. What signifies? I think of an Eng- 
lish field in a sylvan country, a cottage and oaks in 
the corner, a path and a stile, and a turf full of dai- 
sies ; and a child's book with a picture in it becomes 
more precious to me than all the landscapes of 
Claude. 

I intended to sprinkle this article with some flowers 
out of the Italian poets; but positivel}' I will not do 
it. They are not good. They are not true. The 
grapes are sour. Commend me to the cockney sat- 
isfactions of Chaucer, Spenser, and Milton, who talk 
of " merry London," of lying whole hours looking at 
the daisies, and of walking out on Sunday mornings 
to enjoy the daisies and green fields. There are no 
daisies here that I can see, except those belonging to 
the Grand Duke. What is a daisy belonging to a duke ? 
Nature is not to be put upon a gentleman's establish- 



8o THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

ment. The other fine houses do not impose upon 
me. They want comfort and fireplaces, and instead 
of parks, and other natural pieces of ground about 
them, have vines and olives, vines and olives without 
end. The peasants are all vine-dressers and olive- 
squeezers. You meet a piece of a cow occasionally 
on your table ; but a good, handsome, live animal, 
with a low, I have not encountered for many months. 
You must go to Lombardy for a pasture. There are 
goats, ver\^ large and bucolic; but goats in England 
are poor and small, which is the proper goat, and 
renders a kid pathetic. The only one I have a re- 
spect for is the companion of our voyage, given us 
by a friend, and preserved through various vicissi- 
tudes for her sake. A dog belonging to an acquaint- 
ance of ours inhospitably bit her ear off, and the 
storms at .sea frightened away her milk. But she now 
reposes for life, like a matron, enjoying herself among 
scenes more native to her palate than England itself. 
If the sky in England would only mitigate a little 
of its clouds and fogs in favor of one of its country- 
women, and of a modest demi-exotic, who loves a 
green field better than all the sugar-canes of his an- 
cestors . . . But what signifies talking? Suffice it, 
that an Englishman in Italy, who loves Italian poetry, 
and is obliged to be grateful to Italian skies, assures 
his beloved countrymen (who are not always sensible 
of the good things they have about them) that there 
is nothing upon earth so fine as a good, rich English 
meadow in summer time. That English Frenchman, 
La Fontaine, is of the same opinion ; for when he 
speaks with rapture of a bit of turf, and says there is 



THE WISHING-CAP. 8l 

nothing to equal it, it must be recollected that such 
turf is more native to England than to France ; and so 
he would have told us had he come over to England, 
as he ought to have done, and taken a stroll in our 
fields with his friend, St. Evremond. Even a Tus- 
can's idea of a garden is not complete without a piece 
of turf, though the podei'e^ or farm, encroaches every- 
where, and 2^0Linds and shillings must be planted in 
the shape of olive trees. A garden in the English 
taste is a " miracolo " and a " paradiso ; " their poet- 
ry rises within them at the sight of it, but they think 
this is only for princes and grand dukes. Yet Hor- 
ace could not dispense with his grass and his oak 
trees ; and the valley which I look upon from my 
window sparkles in the Decameron with a perpetual 
green. Nature inspires great authors, and they repay 
her by rescuing her very self from oblivion, and keep- 
ing her transitory pictures fresh in our hearts. Tliey^ 
thank God, as well as the fields, are Nature ; and so 
is every great and kindly aspiration we possess. 

No. VIII. 
RAINY-DAY POETRY. 

Dicessit ab astris 

Humor, et ima petit. — Lucan. 

Humor sets the welkin free, 

And condescends with you and me. 

CRITICS lament over a number of idle rhymes 
in the works of Swift, that may come under the 
above title ; and wish, at least, that thev had never 
6 



82 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

been published. They designate them as the sweep- 
ings of his study, his private weaknesses, unworthy 
of so great a genius, and exclaim against his friends 
for collecting them. I really cannot see the humilia- 
tion. If he had written nothing else, there might 
be some color of accusation against him ; though I 
do not see why a dean is bound to be a dull private 
gentleman. But if he had written nothing else, I 
think it may be pretty safely pronounced that he 
would not have written these trifles. They bear the 
mark of a great hand, trifling as they are. Their ex- 
travagance is that of power, not of w^eakness ; and 
the wilder Irish waggery of Dr. Sheridan, slatternly 
and muddled, stands rebuked before them. What 
should we have done had we lost Mary the Cook-maid's 
Letter, and the Grand Question about the Barracks? 
These, to be sure, are excepted by everybody ; but I 
like, for my part, to hear all that such an exquisite 
wag has to say. I except the coarseness of two or 
three pieces, which I never read. I wish the critics 
could say as much. I have such a disgust of this 
kind of writing that there are poems, even in Chaucer, 
which I never look at. But this does not hinder me 
from loving all the rest. Perhaps I carry my dislike 
of what I allude to too far. It is possible that it may 
not be without its use in certain stages of society. 
But so it is, and I mention it, that I may not be 
thought to be confounding or recommending two 
different things. 

It is our own fault if we take this Rainy-Day 
Poetry for more than the author intended it. It is 
our loss if we do not take it for as much. I give 



THE WISHING-CAr. 83 

it this title, because we may suppose it written to 
while away the tedium of rainy days, or of the feel- 
ings that resemble it. There is also Rainy-Day 
Prose ; of a great deal of which my own writings 
are composed, though I was hardly aware of it at 
the time. I relish all that Swift has favored us 
with, of either kind. The only approach that we 
minor humorists can make to such men, is to show 
that we understand them in all their moods, — that 
nothing is lost on us. The greatest fit of laughter 
I ever remember to have had, was in reading the 
Comininatioii piece against William Wood, in which 
all his enemies are introduced execrating him in 
puns. The zest was heightened by the presence of 
a deaf old lady, who had desired a friend of mine 
and myself to take a book, while waiting to see a 
kinsman of hers. Her imperturbable face, the shock- 
ing things we said before her, and even the dread 
of being thought rude, produced a sort of double 
drama in our minds, extreme and irresistible. 

A periodical writer derives the same privileges 
from necessity which other men do from wit. The 
rainy days here in Italy are very rare compared with 
those of England ; but the damps which the latter 
produce within us sometimes make their appearance 
when we are away ; and a . . . In short, it is not 
necessary to inform the reader that periodical writers 
produce a great deal of rainy-day poetry, voluntary 
or involuntary. If he excuses it, all is well. I shall, 
therefore, whenever I am inclined, make use of this 
title to pass off rhymes that I have more pleasure in 
writing than in publishing. The other day I was 



84 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

moved to vent my pluviose indignation on the sub- 
ject of Ferdinand, King of Spain ; a personage who 
has had the extraordinary fortune (even for a prince) 
to become the spectacle of the whole world, precisely 
because he is destitute of every quality whicli de- 
serves their notice. That my poem might be as 
small as my subject, I wrote it in Lilliputian lines 
and miniature cantos ; but, in consequence of the 
variety of feelings that pressed upon me as I pro- 
ceeded, three out of the four became neither one 
thing nor t'other, and are not worth indulgence. 
The exordium I lay before the reader, because it 
contains an anecdote of his majesty's first appear- 
ance on the stage, with which he may not be ac- 
quainted. I had it from a Spanish gentleman now 
in England. 

"I sing the least of things, — 
To wit, the least of kings. 

Imprimis, when the nation 
First raised him to his station, 
And blest him as he rid 
In triumph to Madrid, 
A gentleman who saw him 
(And hugely longed to claw him) 
Said, that he never showed 
One feeling on the road, 
But sat in stupid pride, 
Staring on either side. 
Letting his hand be kissed 
(I think I see the fist). 
As if, where'er they took it. 
They meant to pick his pocket ; 
And goggling like an owl, — 
The hideous beaky fool ! " 

The last line is emphatic ! I had not patience to con- 
tinue in a proper style of burlesque. Ferdinand has 



THE WISHING-CAP. 85 

astonished even those who were never astonished at 
kings before. And yet what was to be expected from 
this portentous specimen of royalty, — royalty, na- 
ked, instinctive, unmitigated, unadorned? What ex- 
amples he had before him ! What an education ! 
What contempt of decencies, public and private ! 
What a mother, what a minister, what a father ! The 
same gentleman who related to me the above anec- 
dote, told me that he had seen the old king dining in 
public, and that the spectacle was disgusting beyond 
description. Such brutal feeding, such pawing and 
grinding, such absorption in the immediate appetite 
and will, and contempt of everything else in the 
world, could only be exhibited by one who was ac- 
customed to set up the mere consciousness of royalty 
as superior to every other consideration. This is 
Ferdinand's principle. He has no other, nor ever 
had, even when he petitioned to be made a member 
of Bonaparte's family. Bonaparte dazzled him, like 
something supernatural, and was an emperor to boot; 
but if he had not been one, it would have made no 
difference. The royal will, the immediate security, 
interest, or even whim, sanctions everything; and 
royalty is to come out clear from the furnace upon 
the strength of its divine right, let it have gone through 
what it may. How much right have we to complain 
of it, flattering it as we do, even in the best regulated 
monarchies? The frog in the fable swelled herself 
to bursting, as it was ; but if she had, besides, had all 
frogland for spectators and applauders, if she had 
been puffed up with huzzas ! and vivas ! and been 
made a worshipped spectacle wherever she carried 



86 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

herself, who would have wondered at all her chil- 
dren's bursting themselves, one after the other, in spite 
of her example? I pity, for my part (next to suffer- 
ing nations), every king in existence, except Ferdi- 
nand ; and will pity him too when he is put out of- a 
condition to slaughter those who would have made 
him an honest man. 

Pleasant C. R. ! let me recall my happier rhymes 
and rainy days by thinking of thee. C. R. is one of 
those happy persons whom goodness, imagination, 
and a tranquil art conspire to keep in a perpetual 
youth. He and his brother once called upon a man 
whom I knew, who told me he had seen " the young 
gentlemen," and yet this man was not old, and C. R. 
was seven-and-thirty if he was a day. C. R. has a 
quaint manner with him, which some take for sim- 
plicity. It is, but not of the sort which they take it 
for. I could hear it talk for an hour together, and 
have heard it, delighting all the while at the interest 
he can take in a trifle, and the entertainment he can 
raise out of it. His simplicity is anything but foolish- 
ness, though it is full of boithomie. He is a nice 
observer. At the same time he is as romantic as a 
sequestered schoolmaster, and will make as grave 
Latin quotations. He produces a history out of a 
whistle. He will describe to you a steam-engine or 
a water-mill, with all the machinery and the noise to 
boot, till you die at once with laughter and real in- 
terest at the gravity of his enthusiasm. He makes 
them appear living things, as the fulling-mills did to 
Don Qtiixote. One day he gave us all an account of 
a man he had seen in tbe Strand, who was standing 



THE WISHING-CAP. S^ 

with a i^ole in his hand, at the top of which was a 
bladder, and underneath the bladder a bill. He told 
us what a mystery this excited in the minds of the 
spectators, and how they looked, first at " the man," 
then at ^' the bill," and then " at the bladder ; " — and 
again, said he, they looked at the bladder, then at 
the bill, and so on, ringing the changes on these words 
till we saw nothing before us in life but a man hold- 
ing those two phenomena. We begged him to change 
the word '' man" into " body," that charm of allitera- 
tion might be added ; and he complied with a pass- 
ing laugh, and the greatest good nature conceivable, 
entering into the joke, and yet feeling a real gravity in 
commenting upon the people's astonishment. This 
combination of " bill, body, and bladder " was, after 
all, nothing but a man standing with an advertise- 
ment of blacking, or an eating-house, or some such 
thing. We have been thankful ever since that " such 
things are." 

I once rode with C. R. from Gainsborough to Don- 
caster, making rhymes w'ith him all the way on the 
word philosopher. We made a hundred and fifty, 
and were only stopped by arriving at our journey's 
end. Readers uninitiated in doggerel may be startled 
at this ; but nothing is more true. The words were 
all different, and legitimate doggerel rhymes ; though, 
undoubtedly, the rhymes themselves must often have 
been repeated, that is to say, the same consonants 
must have begun them. The following is a rainy- 
day production on the same subject, exhausting, we 
believe, the real alphabetical quantum of rhymes, with 
their combinations. But it is submitted with defer- 



SS THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

ence to the learned. We dedicate it to our pleasant 
friend, heartily wishing we could have such another 
ride with him to-morrow. 



You talk of rhyming to the word Philosopher. — 

That jade the Muse '• It's doubtless very cross of her 

To stint one even in rhymes, which are the dross of her ; 

I can't but think that it's extremely gross of her: 

I told her once how very wrong it was of her : 

If I could help, I'd not ask one, that's poz, of her: 

I would not quote procutnbit hutnis bos of her ; 

Nor earn a single lettuce yclept Cos of her ; 

I would not speak to Valcnaer or to Voss of her ; 

Nor Dryden's self, although the Great High Joss of her : 

I would not care for the divitmm os of her. 

No, though she rhymed me the whole mos, flos, ros, of her: 

Walking in woods I wouldn't brush the moss off her : 

Nor in the newest green grown take the gloss of her: 

In winter-lime I wouldn't keep the suows off her ; 

And yet I don't think either I could go so far: 

Thy anger, certainly, I couldn't show so far: 

I didn't think the hatchet I could throw so far. 

Good heavens ! now I reflect, I love the nose of her: 

I could cut off my hair to tie the hose of her : 

The brightest eyes are nothing to the doze of her : 

Love in my heart the smallest keepsake stows of her : 

O, for as many kisses as I chose of her ! 

Since I had one there's no sweet air but blows of her : 

There's not a stream but murmurs as it flows of her : 

I could exalt to heav'n the very clothes of her. 

I wonder how a man can speak in prose of her : 

Yet some have e'en said ill (while my blood froze) of her : 

Never again shall any be that crows offer 

To do her harm, or witli his quid pro guos huff her. 

With pleasure I could every earthly woe suffer 

Rather than see the charmer's little toe suffer : 

' Tis only gouty Muses that should so suffer. 



THE WISHING-CAP. 89 

No. IX. 
EATING AND DRINKING. 

Quae virtus et quanta boni sit vivere parvo, 
(Nee meus hie sermo, sed qua praecepit Ofellus, 
Rustieus abnormis sapiens, crassaque Minerva) 
Discite, non inter lances mensaque nitentes 
Cum stupet insanis acies fulgoribus, et cum 
Aulinis falsis animus meliora recusat: 
Vecum hie impransi meeum disquirite. — Horace. 

What, and how great, the virtue and the art 

To live on little with a cheerful heart ! 

(A doctrine sage, but truly none of mine) 

Let's talk, my friends, but talk before we dine; 

Not when a gilt buffet's reflected pride 

Turns you from sound philosophy aside ; 

Not when from plate to plate your eyeballs roil, 

And the brain dances to the mantling bowl. — Pope. 

SO sang a Roman poet, who describes himself as 
having grown as fat as a pig ; and so sang after 
him an English one, who is said to have died of eat- 
ing stewed lampreys. They were judicious in sing- 
ing before dinner. What is the use, it may be asked, 
of repeating maxims so often contradicted, and by the 
very persons that broach them? To which it may 
be answered. What is the use of any maxims at all? 
Why do the world go to school ? Why do they teach 
their children ? Why do they pique themselves on their 
experience? Is all this useless? The members of a 
community that values itself on its good conduct, will 
hardly answer no : nor must they answer no on the 
present occasion. Poets of the middle order, perhaps 



9© THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

of the greatest, are famous for the warfare they under- 
go between their sensibihties and then' knowledge. 
The stretchers " of the ray to ages yet unborn " phiy 
tricks among their beams of light, that often scorch 
their fingers. But the ray is stretched ; philosophy 
is never so well recommended to the world as by the 
radiance they throw upon it. Generally speaking, 
the book, rather than the author, is in the reader's 
mind ; and where this is not the case, and the danger 
of example is apprehended, perhaps the danger is 
more than compensated by deduction in favor of char- 
ity. Besides, those who do contradict their theories, 
would contradict them more, and in worse taste if they 
were ignorant of what is good, or in bitter despair of 
attaining it. Horace had fits of temperance as well 
as luxury. He has said such pretty things of crusts 
and salads, that one longs to have eaten them with 
him, and laughed at the fume of great dinners. 
Pope was a little domestic fowl, brought up tenderly, 
and accustomed to be picking. He could not take 
stout exercise : his frame would not allow it. '' Then 
he ought to have eaten little in proportion." True ; 
but something is to be allowed to the perpetual wear 
and tear occasioned by the exercise of the mind, and 
something to the irritability of that very delicacy of 
constitution which rendered indulgence perilous. The 
moth flies to the candle ; robuster insects avoid it. 
Let us thank the butterfly race, notwithstanding, for 
reminding us of Nature and the flowers. What num- 
bers of men, of similar constitutions with Pope, have 
died of surfeits, and done nothing! How much more 
gracefully might they have lived, how oftener have 



THE WISHING-CAP. 



91 



varied their pleasures, with temperance, and after all 
survived to a pretty good age, considering their creak- 
ing bodies (for he lived to be fifty-six), had they pos- 
sessed his good sense and his elegance of desire ! 

I like to begin a lecture with a good charitable ex- 
ordium. In the first place, I have need of it myself j 
and secondly, I have observed that advice always does 
more harm than good, if it does not see fair play. I 
must observe again, then, in behalf of the superfluous 
diner, particularly if he is studious and sedentary, that 
there may be reasons for his roasting of eggs beyond 
what a commonplace moralist may discern. Study 
exhausts the body. Mental excitement demands with 
a loud, I do not say always with a lawful voice, the 
help of ph3^sical nourishment. A poet shall come to 
table from a morning's occupation, his nerves shat- 
tered, his blood thick and melancholy from over-driv- 
ing, his whole soul agitated and confused in his body, 
in which it has been at supernatural work. I will 
concede, that in this very work he has been sowing 
seeds of philosophy, and writing couplets on temper- 
ance. Let the future ages who are to benefit from his 
inspiration, look back with an eye of tenderness rather 
than scorn on the havoc he proceeded to make among 
his dishes. Perhaps he will fast to-morrow. At least 
they will have the benefit of his remorse. Inspira- 
tion, which is nothing but a concentration of the fac- 
ulties upon the exercise of some natural talent, is a 
mighty exhauster of the stomach, a producer of mor- 
bid appetites and craving desires for refreshment. 
The nerves, trembling from the glowing task, demand 
to be set right again; the blood, hot and dragging 



92 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

with fatigue, calls for an airy lift. He had better go 
out into the air, and take exercise : — I exhort him 
to do so: — Milton did so: — the greatest of his 
brethren have been surely temperate : — he will re- 
pent bitterly if he does not. No : the meat and 
drink come in, and the deed is done. Let us take 
the advice he has left us, and pity him for the danger- 
ous warmth he took in writing it. 

It is the same, in proportion, with pleasure and mel- 
ancholy of all sorts, with any kind of over-fatigue. Fif- 
ty things may excuse us in the eye of charity : climate, 
anxiety, troublesome tasks, past or to come, bodily 
or mental exhaustion, from whatever cause ; nay, the 
cheerfulness of our return to one's friends or family. 
But melancholy, above all, claims a particular tender- 
ness. It is a hard thing when a man has been in 
trouble all the morning, and sees nothing but trouble, 
perhaps, before him in the afternoon, to deny him the 
pleasure of tickling his palate a little. The loss of a 
very little satisfaction is sometimes a great loss in this 
world ; the difficulty of foregoing it is in proportion. 
Let the abstaining from a particular dish, or the get- 
ting up from dinner without a full stomach, be re- 
spected accordingly. I confess I had more difficulty 
in leaving off butter and cheese (which happen to dis- 
agree with my temperament) than in volunteering 
some actions, which the world would have thought 
less easy. The satisfaction of having one's way, or 
of doing what we can to have it, and venting one's 
feelings on account of what we think just and honor- 
able, is a mighty and a reasonable help to one's vir- 
tue. The pinch comes when our virtue is at war 



THE WISHING-CAP. 93 

with our tendencies ; when we hold to it through pain 
and anxiety, and when we doubt whether we shall be 
as well or ill thought of for acting up to our con- 
sciences. 

Again and again, therefore, I say, let justice be 
done to self-denial in matters of beef and port, and 
above all, I say, let those consider also the necessity 
of the self-denial, who would fain lighten the gather- 
ing shadows of age or middle life, and retain as 
much health and good temper as they can for them- 
selves and others. They have no alternative be- 
tween a great deal of it and exercise. The more 
they exercise, the more they may indulge ; for there 
is a business in all things ; and citizens must earn 
their dinners, as well as the money to purchase them, 
if the}^ would not have those other creditors come upon 
them, spleen and gout. I do not say that they require 
nothing to give them a fillip. Qiiite the contrary. 
I only say that sedentar}^ eating and drinking is not the 
best ; that the good effects of it are not lasting, and 
the bad ones very much so ; and that however diffi- 
cult it may be for a pleasant fellow to deny himself 
" t'other plateful " as well as " t'other glass,", deny it 
he must, or his comfort some day will be grievously 
denied to him. He may rub his hands at the sight 
of his dishes, he may crow over his wine, he may 
throw sayings (as he willingly would the plates) at 
the heads of the moral and the musty ; but as surely 
as he sits there, gay and contemptuous, so surely will 
he find the " black ox's foot " come upon his toes under 
the table, not to be lightened, to any real purpose, 
by all the effects of champagne. Age is always sup- 



94 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

posed to bring melancholy along with it. I do not 
believe it. I believe that many a temperate old man, 
who has nevertheless indulged a reasonable appetite, 
is as cheerful as the majority of young ones. But age 
will have shadows with a vengeance if it has been 
intemperate ; and middle life will be plunged in them 
before its time. Purple faces and a jovial corpulence 
may impose upon the spectator ; but the sick gentle- 
man within knows what his tenement consists of. 
A fool may indeed go to his grave pretty comfortably ; 
a mere animal,' a human prize ox, may swell and 
abuse his system for a long time, because he has no 
intellect to be hurt by it, and to hurt him in turn ; 
but good sense in the head, and a perpetual contra- 
diction of it in the stomach, will never do in the long 
run. The head ought to rule ; the stomach will re- 
venge its bad government by sending up its angry 
ambassadors of megrims and vapors ; and the anx- 
iety and irritability of the ruler will in time revenge 
itself on the stomach. 

Are we not then to obey the impulses and benevo- 
lences of Nature? Have we palates and appetites for 
nothing? Are we to turn hermits and starvelings, 
and not enjoy ourselves ? 

By no means. There is the simple, and eternal, 
and benevolent law of Nature : " Earn, and you 
may enjoy." Experience adds. Enjoy truly, and you 
will know what it is to enjoy with reason. And 
Nature adds. Enjoy with reason in general ; and oc- 
casionally I will smile and shut my eyes when 
friends and festivity call upon you for an amiable de- 
lirium. Would you enable yourself to eat heartily, 



THE WISHING-CAP. 95 

yet without oppression? Secure a good digestion 
with exercise. Would you enable yourself to take 
a reasonable portion of wine? Spin your blood first 
with exercise, that it may not be roused too abruptly, 
and fevered. Would you be free from melancholy, a 
strong and cheerful man, an old man free from the 
clouds and peevishness of old age? Wash, exercise, 
and be temperate, that you may throw off ill humors 
at the pores, and not have your soul incrusted with 
sordidness of the body. As much, perhaps, ought to 
be said about washing as about exercise. It is a 
duty not sufficiently attended to in our chill climate. 
There is a story of a Scotchwoman, who attempted to 
drown herself in a fit of melancholy. She was taken 
out of the water in a doubtful state, and underwent 
an active rubbing, according to the process of the 
Humane Society. She not only returned to life, but 
recovered her health and spirits ; the physicians pro- 
nouncing, that twenty to one her melancholy was 
entirely owing to her dirt. There is the same reac- 
tion in this respect as in the other. Melancholy peo- 
ple are apt to grow careless of their persons ; people 
who are careless of their persons grow melancholy. 
But cleanliness is the first of virtues ; not the first in 
rank, but the first in necessity.* The most selfish 
people can practise it for their own sakes ; the rest 

* "Cleanliness," observes Charles Lamb, in that little neglected essayling, en- 
titled Saturday Night, "says some sage man, is next to Godliness. It may be : 
but how it came to sit so very near, is the marvel. Methinks some of the more 
human virtues might have put in for a place before it. Justice — Humanity — 
Temperance — are positive qualities ; the courtesies, and little civil ofi&ces of life, 
had I been Master of the Ceremonies to that Court, should have sate ab<J^•e the 
salt in piefereoce to a mere negation. " —Ed. 



96 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

ought to practise it for themselves and others. With 
regard to exercise, judge between the two following- 
extremes : A fox-hunter can get drunk every night 
in the year, and yet live to an old age ; but then he is 
all exercise, and no thought. A sedentary scholar shall 
not be able to get drunk once in a year with impuni- 
ty ; but then he is all thought, and no exercise. Now 
the great object is neither to get drunk, nor to be all 
exercise, nor to be all thought ; but to enjoy all our 
pleasures with a sprightly reason. The four ordinary 
secrets of health are, early rising, exercise, personal 
cleanliness, and the rising from table with a stomach 
unoppressed. There may be sorrows in spite of 
these ; but they will be less with them ; and nobody 
can be truly comfortable without. 

There is a great rascal going about town (a traveller 
to boot in foreign countries, particularly in the East 
and in the South) who does a world of mischief, 
under the guise of helping you to a digestion. I am 
loath to mention him. His very name is beneath 
the dignity and grace of my Platonic philosophy. 
But I must. He talks much about the liver. Some- 
times he calls himself the Blue Pill, sometimes one 
thing, sometimes another. He is particularly, fond 
of being denominated " the most innocent thing in the 
vs^orld." Let the sufferer beware of him. He may 
turn his company to advantage a few times, provided, 
and oitly provided^ he does not anticipate his ac- 
quaintance, or let him divert him from his better rem- 
edies. Wherever he threatens to become -a habit, 
let the patient take to his heels. Nothing but exer- 
cise can save him. He is only surfeit in disguise ; a 



THE WISHING-CAP. 97 

perpetual temptei" to repletion, under the guise of 
preventing the consequences. The excess is tempted, 
and the consequences are not prevented ; for, at the 
least, one ill is planted in the constitution instead of 
another. Disguise the scoundrel as we may, he is 
only, in a small shape, what an emetic was to Vitel- 
lius, or a bath of mud to the drunken barbarian.* 
Sometimes, with an unblushing foresight and inten- 
tion, he is even taken before dinner ! Imagination 
escapes from the thought of an abuse so gross. I dart, 
upon the wings of my Wishing-Cap, out doors, and 
hail, as I go, those light bodies and animating looks, 
which are the happy results of Exercise. 



No. X. 
THE VALLEY OF LADIES. 

PoichS noi fummo qui, d io desiderato di menarvi in parte assai vicina di 
questo luogo, dove is non credo che moi alcuna fosse di voi ; e chiamavisi la 
Valle delle Donne. — Decameron. 

Since we have been here, I have longed to take you into a spot close by, where 
none of you, I thinlc, have ever been. It is called the Valley of Ladies. 

AS the spring advanced here in Tuscany, and the 
leaves all came out, and the vines rose like 
magic, and day after day the green below was con- 
trasted with a blue southern sky overhead, I began, 
modestly speaking, to be reconciled to the beauties of 
Italy. I was wrong when I said there were no trees 

* One of the O'Neales used to inflame himself with drinking, and then stand 
up to the neck in a bath of mud to cool. 

7 



98 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

in this neighborhood except olives. We have a few 
poplars, oaks, and young chestnuts, &c., which make 
an agreeable variety. They incrust the lanes with a 
decent quantity of hedge and bower. But the vines 
make an astonishing difference. In the v/inter you 
see nothing of thousands of them ; in the spring out 
they come, from a bit of a trunk, like so much fairy- 
work, and grow with a marvellous rapidity. In a 
few weeks they are up round their standards, and 
climbing their trees ; doubling, as it were, at one 
blow, the whole prospect of green. Add to this the 
noble growth of the corn, and the exuberance of 
everything wild about the hedges, and spring is ten- 
fold spring here to what it is in the north. The con- 
trast is more striking, because there is no green in 
winter except dark firs and cypresses and the hazy- 
looking olive. The beautiful grass, which remains 
all the year round in England, gives a sort of perpet- 
ual summer to the earth, whatever may be the case 
with the sky ; but the sky in Italy during winter, 
though it has glorious intervals of blue and warmth, 
is inclement enough to make the inhabitants chatter 
with cold, and there is no verdure on the ground. All 
this being the case, the very green of the vines had in 
it something of England ; and as the ground is no 
sooner dry here than it is very dry, I put vigor in my 
steps, and my Orlando Innamorato in my pocket, and 
did my best to fancy myself at once abroad and at 
home in the sunny-bowered Valley of Ladies. 

The Valley of Ladies is a spot celebrated in the 
sixth and seventh books of the Decameron. It lies at 
the foot of one of the Fiesolan hills, about two miles 



THE WISHING-CAP. 99 

from Florence, commencing at the path leading up to 
Maiano, and terminating under the Convent of the 
Doccia. Doccia signifies a water-spout, a name with 
which the convent was christened by a little stream, 
the Affrico, which leaps out beneath it and waters the 
valley. This stream, and another called the Mensola, 
which runs through a neighboring valley, are the 
metamorphosed hero and heroine of a poem of Boc- 
caccio's, called the Nimphale of the Fiesole. Upon 
the Mensola, about half a mile from the Valley of 
Ladies, is the Villa Gherardi, in which Boccaccio laid 
the scene of his four first days ; and upon the Mu- 
gnone, about a mile on the other side of the valley, is 
the Villa Palmieri, to which his company retired for 
the remainder of their time, on account of the influ- 
ence of neighbors. Not far from the villa a house is 
shown, which is said to have belonged to Dante. 
Milton and Galileo give a glory to Fiesole beyond 
even its starry antiquity ; nor, perhaps, is there a 
name eminent in the best annals of Florence to which 
some connections cannot be traced with this favorite 
spot. When it was full of wood it must have been 
eminently beautiful. It is at present, indeed, full of 
vines and olives, but this is not wood woody ^ not arbo- 
raceous, and properly sylvan. A few poplars and for- 
est trees mark out the course of the Afl^rico, and the 
convent ground contrived to retain a good slice of 
evergreens, which make a handsome contrast on the 
hillside with its white cloister. But agriculture, quar- 
ries, and wood fires have destroyed the rest. Never- 
theless, I now found the whole valley beautiful. It is 
sprinkled with white cottages ; the cornfields pre- 



lOO THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

sented agreeable paths, leading among vines and fig 
trees ; and I discovered even a meadow, — a positive 
English meadow^, — w^itli the hay cut, and adorned 
vs'ith English trees. In a grassy lane, betwixt the 
corn, sat a fair rustic, receiving the homage of three 
young fellows of her acquaintance. In the time of 
Boccaccio, the Affrico formed a little crystal lake, in 
which (the said lake behaving itself, and being prop- 
erly sequestered), the ladies of his company, one day, 
bathe themselves. The gentlemen, being informed 
of it, follow their example in the afternoon ; and, 
next day, the whole party dine there, take their siesta 
under the trees, and recount their novels. This lake 
has now disappeared before the husbandman, as if it 
were a fairy thing, of which a money-getting age was 
unworthy. Part of the Affrico is also closed up from 
the passenger by private grounds, but the rest of it 
runs as clearly as it did ; and under the convent a 
remnant of the woodier part of the valley — a deli- 
cious remnant — is still existing. The stream jumps 
into it as if with delight, and goes slipping down 
little banks. It is embowered with olives and young 
chestnut trees, and looks up to the long white cloister, 
which is a conspicuous object over the country. 

A white convent, a woody valley, chestnut trees 
intensely green, a sky intensely blue, a stream which 
it is a pleasure to stop and drink, — behold a subject 
fit for a day in August ! And besides these, there are 
stories recounted and ladies bathing. 

If the reader objects to the probability of this last 
circumstance in a civilized country and so near town, 
he must remember that the place in Boccaccio's time 



THE WISHING-CAP. lOI 

was really- sequestered ; that the convent did not exist 
then (though, of course, monks could have been no 
objection), and that Florence has always been a 
walled city, from which you emerge directly into the 
country. The lake was so little frequented (as, indeed, 
most beautiful places are apt to be), that Boccaccio 
represents the male part of his company as unac- 
quainted with it till enlightened by the more inquir- 
ing spirit of the ladies. In short, the manners of one 
time or place argue nothing for the manners of an- 
other. I know a lady who has frequently bathed 
among the rocks of a West India island, as Virginia 
does in the novel ; and if Thomson does not appear 
to have hit very nicely the manners of Englishwomen 
in his episode of Damon and Musidora, he probably 
copied after Nature as far north as his own country. 
The two damsels in the Gentle Shepherd bathe in a 
pool, in one of those pretty landscapes with which 
that beautiful pastoral abounds. Sir Philip Sydney's 
heroines, in the Arcadia, do the same. It is true 
they were princesses, and nobody could enter the 
place on pain of death ; but an intruder was in it 
nevertheless. I confess, to my taste, the banks ought 
to be very rugged and woody, and the bather be able 
to slip into the water like a fish ; in consideration of 
which I might allow an agreeable trepidation, and 
much interesting mixture of modesty and vivacity. 
But Musidora playing the Venus de' Medici in that 
open, and at the same time reflecting manner, is what 
I cannot tolerate, though she begins her answer to 
her lover's placard in a pretty taste. 

This, then, is the '^ Valle delle Donne." If Boc- 



I02 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

caccio's spirit ever visits his native country, here must 
it repose. It is a place for a knight in romance to 
take his rest in, his head on his elbow, and the sound 
of the water in his ear. Why do I say, " if Boccac- 
cio's spirit ever visits"? I have seen him there, such 
as he looked when he meditated the story of the Fal- 
con. The knight in romance also, — I have seen 
him. He was in dark armor, with a red cross on 
his shield. He had taken his helmet and gauntlet 
off to feel the air, and lay, like Lord Herbert of 
Cherbury in the picture, thinking placidly of achieve- 
ment. 

Being somewhat of a knight-errant myself, I rest 
in another part of the shade, looking down upon him 
of the red cross, and, with the help of my book, 
conjuring up a thousand visions. 

How vivid, as you look up, is the green of these 
young chestnut trees ! How blue, indeed, the blue 
sky ! How warm were the paths I came through ; 
how cool is the shade ! What a basking, a fertility, 
a southern richness, a lazy lending and generosity of 
all that is in earth and air. A smiling slumber of Na- 
ture with her hands full, diffuses its influence all over 
the place ! The very bees seem to be at work, that 
we may lull ourselves to sleep. 

I whisk to England in my Wishing-Cap, and fetch 
the reader to enjoy the place with me. 

How do you like it? Is it not a glen most glen- 
icular? a confronting of two leafy banks, with a rivu- 
let between? Shouldn't you like to live in tlie house 
over the way, where the doves are.'* If you walk a 
little way to the left, through the chestnut trees, you 



THE WISHING-CAP. 



103 



see Florence. The convent up above us on the right 
is the one I spoke of. There is nobody in it nov^ but 
a peasant for housekeeper. Look at this lad coming 
down the path, w^ith his olive complexion and black 
eyes. He is bringing goats. I see them emerging 
from the trees ; huge creatures, that w^hen they rise 
on their hind legs to nibble the boughs almost look 
formidable. There is Theocritus for you. And here 
is Theocritus or Longus, w^hich you will ; for a peas- 
ant girl is with him, one of the pleasantest counte- 
nances in the world, with a forehead and eyes for a 
poetess, as they all have. I wish the fellow were as 
neat as his companion, but somehow these goatherds 
look of a piece with their goats. They love a ragged 
picturesque. 

You have only to see the e3'es and foreheads in 
Tuscaoy to know that you are among a people capa- 
ble of great things. And what, indeed, has not this 
little region done in the world of art and poetry.? 
The rest of the face is genial and good-natured, only 
to an English eye the features are apt to be too large ; 
and the higher you rise in society the more advantage 
we have in our women. A sophisticated Italian is a 
formidable thing, man or woman. All the world 
cannot match a room full of young Englishwomen, 
delicate and accom.plished. And you could sooner 
persuade one of them to take up her abode in the 
country, and brown her fair face with the sunshine, 
than seduce a ready-made Tuscan brunette to live out 
of the gates of Florence. Two months in the year, 
May and October, — very often only one, — they run 
about the villas a little. All the rest, of their life is 



I04 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

passed in town ; and they are never seen abroad but 
in their carriages. They are fond of flowers. They 
have also the grace to visit the Cascine every evening. 
The Cascine are meadows with trees, where the 
Grand Duke has an aviary and dairy, a pretty little 
pastoralized edition of Kensington Gardens, with the 
Arno on one side and mountains in the distance. But 
their visitors only come for a drive, and they would not 
come for that if it were not fashionable. The charm 
consists in criticising shaped bonnets, and saying, " Ah, 
there's Tomkins ! " — I beg pardon, — Gian-Battista, I 
should say ; but these Italian commonplaces sound so 
finely that they impose on one's ear. The Tomkinses 
are a numerous race all over the world, " from China to 
Peru ; " and they abound much more among the upper 
orders in the south than the lower. If I were a bach- 
elor, and inclined to marry in Italy, I should like to 
select a peasant girl, of a reasonable age, deepen the 
depth of her eyes with a little more knowledge, and in 
five years' time make her my wife. The graces would 
follow as a matter of course. In her style of lan- 
guage I already defy anybody to discover the differ- 
ence, except that among the ladies the perpetual 
recurrence of certain elegancies of no meaning, and 
phrases of polite deprecation, looks more like the art 
of Letter-writing made Easy, or the Academy of 
Compliments. 

Let an Englishman, if he is wise and well off, seek 
his wife among those most respectable of all the re- 
spectable families on earth, who, in his own native 
soil, spend a good part of every year in the country, 
and make everybody happy about them. I have one 



THE WISHING-CAP. IO5 

in my eye now, at C, inNorthumberland, the headof 
which is a second Allworthy. Even the town resi- 
dence of this family looks upon a noble garden. 
Never shall I forget how affectionately the mother 
and daughter (the most unaffected people in the 
world, and yet they read Latin — hear that, ye Blues 
and ye anti-Blues !), — never shall I forget how they 
all came about the object of their love, putting their 
gentle hands about his neck, and asking him how 
he fared after his walk. There is not a good of his 
fellow-creatures which he does not seek, nor a grace to 
grace it which he does not feel. I sometimes change 
color when alone to think what regard and gratitude 
an author may feel towards such men, and how long 
he may struggle in vain to show it. Why cannot we 
coin some of the wealth of our imagination into proofs 
tangible, and pour down our souls upon them in 
the princely shower? The less they care for it, in one 
sense, the more desire we have to show them how we 
care for it in another. And yet, God knows, I grudge 
no man his generosity. But " these things are a 
mystery." I look upon it as a blessing in my lot that 
all the friends I ever was connected with have sym- 
pathized with me in preferring a country life. And 
yet they have liked the town too, and so do I. Luck- 
ily, very genuine country maybe found near town for 
those who are not rich enough to go to a distance. 
Come, let us whisk ourselves back again. There is 
nothing like it. I pitch myself into one of those old 
green lanes of which I am so fond, and invite any 
bachelor that pleases to come and see me. I think there 
is a cottage in the neighborhood that will suit him. 



I06 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

No. XL 
LOVE AND THE COUNTRY. 

Hie gelidi fontes, hie mollia prata, Lycori, 

Hie neraus, hie ipso teeum consumere aevo. — Virgil. 

A wood, a stream, fair fields, and flowering hedges — 
O, love, with thee, here could I live lor ages ! 

IT is a large, low cottage, smoking among the trees, 
with its back to a couple of green hills that shelter 
it from the north and east. Everything is neat: 
Everything is quiet. Listen to the bees ! What 
meadows go down there to the plain ! What rich 
trees are about us, — elms, oaks, and beeches ; not rich 
in fruit, but rich in verdure and leaves, and food for 
poetry. By heavens ! this is better than Tuscany. 
The pleasures there are all too tangible and sensual, 

— all corn, v\dne, and oil. Here man does not live by- 
olives alone, but by those useful trees also, which, 
among a number of other calumniated goods, are on 
the face of them useless. " I love," exclaimed some- 
body, on passing a moorland, " to see some ground 
left in God Almighty's hands." So say I. I love to 
see trees that look as if they were good for nothing 
but to walk under, and to furnish us with a sentiment. 
I have a particular regard for those which the car- 
penter rejects with disdain. I know they do not ex- 
ist for nothing; and I take them for what they are, 

— memorandums of the abundance and poetry of 
Nature. 



THE WISHING-CAP. lO/ 

At the bottom of the grounds about the cottage, 
there is a lane by a brook-side, which runs into a 
cross-country road. But the place, though solitary, is 
not desolate. There are some farms, and a noble 
mansion not far off, where a hospitable old gentleman, 
the possessor, has a fine library. The lanes branch 
off in all directions, some opening into meadows, oth- 
ers into cornfields, most of them between rich banks 
of earth ornamented with natural hedges. One of my 
favorite spots is a bit of heath, looking up to a hill 
full of trees, out of which peeps a summer-house. 
Another is a wilderness, where the roots of the old 
trees issue forth and twist over the ground. But I 
know scarcely one which I prefer to certain meadows 
enriched with elm trees. I lie there very often in 
my Wishing-Cap, when the hay has been cut, and 
build castles in the air, — I should rather say, cottages 
in the trees, — for those whom I love. 

Is not this a pleasant place to come to of an even- 
ing? "What can man more desire? " when he has 
been studying all the morning, and is determined to 
make heavens of his afternoons? Task the most am- 
bitious old bachelor, whether there have not been 
periods in his life — and the very best of them all — 
when the idea of such a cottage smoking among the 
trees, a kettle on the fire, and his arm round a slen- 
der waist, has not found the " consummation," of all 
others, " most devoutly to be wished." 

Accordingly, I have provided a wife for my reader. 
She is not regularly handsome ; but she has one of 
those faces which are justly accounted more beau- 
tiful than beauty. A person who goes by says, 



I08 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

" What a lovely expression ! " There is intelligence 
in her eyes, and an infinite sweetness about her mouth. 
Whenever she turns her face upon you in kindness, 
she seems to thank and bless you, and wn'sh you all 
happy things. Sorrow might cut her to pieces, ere 
she would say a word to distress you : or if she did, 
she would repent it forever. But in joy, — I advise 
you to bring a world of vivacity along with you, 
for she will give as good as you bring. She is fond 
of books and music. If you do not have some ex- 
quisite casts and engravings to adorn your parlor 
with, you will not do her justice. When females of 
her own rank come to see her, they long to play 
the rustic as she does. When the peasant girls bring 
her provision, they desire more than ever to be la- 
dies. She meets them half way, and will pin their 
handkerchiefs for them, if got loose. Between our- 
selves (for it must not be mentioned to everybody), 
she can make an excellent pudding. It was a whim 
of her grandmother to teach her ; and she insists 
that her cliildren will be the better for it, and not 
at the mercy of a cook ; for I must own, that al- 
though not yet married, she has the face to speak 
of the family she may have some day ; and has even 
been heard to say, that she should not like to make a 
very poor match, because she hopes to have leisure 
enough to be her husband's companion ; which, add- 
ed she, is after all the first business of a wife : though 
she blushed when she said it. Her vivacity and ad- 
dress serve to extricate her gentleness out of its dif- 
ficulties. Her brother, who is a collegian, and loves 
somewhat maliciously to call her " a Blue," caught 



THE WISHING-CAP. 



:o9 



her one day, to his great triumph, in the act of 
loitering over a dumpHng she was making, and read- 
ing a book. She was forced to blow open the 
leaves, her fingers being all over flour. In vain she 
protested that it was an offence extraordinary, and 
that the pudding should not be the worse for it. 
He takes an unfair advantage, and brings her out to 
us in the garden, holding her by the helpless arms, 
upon which, what does my lady, but suddenly slip 
aside, smear his ears all over with the flour, and 
scamper away ! But I shall never make an end if I 
say more. 

Now, what does any bachelor say to such a cottage 
with such a mistress.^ Is it not a pretty mixture of 
the polite and the rustic? I once heard a nobleman 
observe, that it was natural to men of rank to like 
peasant girls, and for plebeians to like ladies. I am 
not of his opinion. I think that whenever men prefer 
women of an inferior station — (unless they do it for 
the sake of a libertine variety, or because they have 
undergone some particular disgust) — it is owing to 
want of address. The peasant renders them bolder. 
Their superior station enables them to substitute airs 
of condescension and familiarity, for approaches which 
they know not how to manage. But nothing is so de- 
lightful in a woman, as a mixture of habitual gentility 
with the simple and healthy tastes which might adorn 
the heroines of a genuine pastoral. The Peggy of 
Allan Ramsay is a promising specimen. If I had 
married out of the Lizard family in the Guardian — 
(which, by the way, is the sort of family I spoke of in 
my last) — I should have wished Miss Cornelia to 



no THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

have more of " the Sparkler" in her composition, or 
the Sparkler more of Cornelia. Since I saw them 
last, they both want mending a little. I used to prefer 
the SjDarkler, till she made that unsparkling observa- 
tion in No. 31 ; which, however, I trust the self-love 
of the old gentleman induced him to misrepresent. 
But Mrs. Cornelia's romance, in the same number, 
would have been more to my taste, had she acknowl- 
edged at once, that she intended to make somebody 
happy, instead of beating about the bush in that 
manner.* 



* The old gentleman referred to above is Nestor Ironside, the imaginary 
writer of the Guardian. The account of the Lizard family is by Steele. This is 
his character of the Sparkler: "Mrs. Mary, the youngest daughter, whom 
they rally and call Mrs. Ironside, because I have named her the Sparkler, is the 
very quintessence of good nature and generosity ; she is the perfect picture of her 
grandfather ; and if one can imagine all good qualities which adorn human life 
become feminine, the seeds, nay, the blossom of them, are apparent in Mrs. 
Mary." Here is what he says of Mrs., or, as we should call her, Miss Cornelia : 
" Mrs. Cornelia passes away her time very much in reading, and that with so great 
an attention that it gives her the air of a student, and has an ill effect upon her, 
as she is a fine young woman ; the giddy part of the sex will have it she is in love ; 
none will allow that she affects so much being alone, but for want nf particular com- 
pany. I have railed at romances before her, for fear of her falling into those deep 
studies : she has fallen in with my humor that way for the time, but I know not 
how, my prohibition has, it seems, only excited her curiosity ; and I am afraid she 
is better read than I know of for she said of a glass of water in which she was going 
to wash her hands after dinner, dipping her fingers with a pretty lovely air, ' It is 
crystalline.' I shall examine farther, and wait for clearer proofs." Here is 
also the Sparkler's ''unsparkling observation," made in the course of some 
profitable conversation upon happiness: "My favorite, the Sparkler, with an 
air of innocence and modesty, which is peculiar to her, said that she never ex- 
pected such a thing as happiness, and th.-it she thought the most any one could 
dowastokeep themselves from being uneasy; for, as Mr. Ironside has often 
told us, says she, we should endeavor to be easy here, and happy hereafter." 
The romantic Cornelia "was for living in a wood among choirs of birds, with 
zephyrs, echoes, and rivulets to make up the concert. She would not seem to 
include a husband in her scheme, but at the same time talked of cooing turtles, 
mossy banks, and beds of violets, that one might easily perceive she was not 
without thoughts of a companion in her solitudes." — EU. 



THE WISHING-CAP. I I I 

I will conclude this iDaper with two old French 
songs, which are much to the purpose. The first of 
them is by Maynard, an author of a caustic turn, 
who agrees with the nobleman i?bove mentioned in 
preferring peasants to ladies. The other is from the 
good-natured pen of Froissart, the old chronicler, and 
makes the lady partake of the peasant. If Froissart 
wrote many such songs, his poems deserve to be re- 
printed as well as his Chronicles. 

ADIEU TO LADIES. 

Hilene, Oriane, Angelique, 

Je ne suis plus cle vos amans ; 
Loin de moi I'Jclat magnifique 

De noms pulsus dans les romans. 

Ma passion, quoiqu' Amour fasse, 

N2 fera plus son paiadis 
Des beautes qui tirent leur race 

De la chronique d'Amadis. 

Vive Barbe, Alix, at Nicole, 

Dont les simples nai'vetes 
Ne furent jamais a I'ecole 

Des ruses et des vanites. 

Une sautd fraiche et robuste 

Fait que toujours leur teint est net ; 

Et lorsque leur beaute s'ajuste, 
La campagne est leur cabinette. 

Lour ame n'est pas inhumaine 

Pour tir:r mes vceux en longueur ; 
Jamais J2 n'ai perdu I'haleine 

En courant apres leur ri^ueur. 

Adieu, dames, dont I'habit riche 

Sous un lux vain et trompeur 
N'est autre chose que la niche 

D'une carcasse k faire peur. 



112 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

J'en veux aux femmes de village, 
Je n'aitne plus en autre part ; 

La nature en leur beaux visages 
Fait la figue aux secrets de I'art. 



TRANSLATION. • 

Helens, Clelias, Orianas, 

I am no longer of your train ; 

Far from me be your sultanas, 
With their splendor, proud and vain. 

I can love, and feel a passion ; 

But no more I place my bliss 
Upon dames of lofty stations. 

Who descend from Amadis. 

Long live Alice, Barbara, Molly I 
Girls whose little simple hearts 

Never went to school with folly 
To pick up your airs and arts. 

Strong and fresh with healthy duties, 
Theirs the tint is, theirs the bloom ; 

When the rouges adjust their beauties, 
Fields are all their dressing-room. 

They, good creatures, keep no man in 
Vile suspense, to show their power ; 

None need lose their breath with running 
After them, from hour to hour. 

Farewell, ladies, patch'd and painted. 
Who beneath your stately clothes 

Hide but limbs with luxury tainted, 
Bodies fit to scare the crows. 

Morning eyes and milkmaid faces 
Henceforth rule an honest heart : 

Nature, in their rustic graces. 
Snaps her fingers at your art. 



THE WISHING-CAP. 11-2 



THE BEAUTY WHO WAS TOLD TO BE PROUD. 

Jeune Beaute doit, dit-on, 

Etre orgueilleusette ; 
On reconnait k ce ton 

Noble pucellette. 

Hier au hasard me levai 

Dis la matiiid ; 
Au jardin me promenai 

Dessous la feuille. 

Diji me couchais par mi 
La naissante herbette, 
Quand je vis mon doux ami 

CueiLaiit la fieurctte. 

Comment gionder un amant 

De sa dil'gence ' 
J'ecoutais son compliment 

Avec complaisance. 

D'un bouquet il me fit don, 

Simplctte, doucette ; 
J'oubliai cette l-^^on, 

Que I'on m'avait faite. 

Jeune Beaute doit, dit-on, 

Etre orgueilleusette ; 
On reconnait a ce ton 

Noble pucellette. 



TRANSLATION. 

A beauty ought, they say, 

To be a little proud ; 
It is the only v,-ay 

To know her from the crowd. 

I rose at early morning, 
Upon this truth intent, 

And down the garden turning. 
Beneath the trees I went. 

I laid me in the bloom, 
Among the grassy bowers. 

And saw my lover come, 
A-gathering of flowtrs. 

8 



114 ^^^ WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

How could a lady look 
On such a work askance ? 

His compliments I took, 
I own, with complaisance. 

A bunch of flowers he gave me 
From his own coat-button, 

And, as I hope to save me. 
My lesson was forgotten. 

Good Lord ! and yet they say 
A beauty should be proud ; 

It is the only way 
To know her from the crowd. 



MISCELLANEOUS 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES, 



Peace be with the soul of that charitable and courteous author who introduced 
the ingenious way of miscellaneous writing. — Shaftesbury. 



Essays and Sketches. 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES OF LORDS. 

THE first time we saw any Lords, we were too 
young to receive such impressions of them as 
should remain in after hfe. The earHest man of any 
note we remember, was an American projector, who 
had a talent for ship-building. We were told of the 
extraordinary things he could do to make ships sail 
fast and well ; and him we have never forgotten. We 
have his face this minute before us. 

The next time we were blessed with the sight of 
Right Honorable and Most Noble faces, was in the 
House of Lords itself. We had just been shown the 
House of Commons, where the nonchalant appear- 
ance of a few members, with their hats on, lounging 
upon the benches, struck us as no very dignified sight, 
though we thought them sharp looking men and 
mightily unaffected. From there we were taken to 
see the Lords ; and we state, with perfect candor, the 
impression they made on us, when we say that they 
looked like a parcel of linen-drapers. If the Com- 
mons were free and easy, we expected to find the 
Noble Lords noble and lordly ; we thought we should 

M7 



Il8 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

see the dignity which we missed among the others. 
Not an atom of it. Both houses, it is true, were very 
thinly attended, and the most dignified members of 
both may have been absent ; but we found that a 
number of lords might be collected and not look a 
bit superior to any other collection of decent men. 
We had absolutely seen our chamberlain of London 
a few days before, who surpassed every man of them 
in dignity of appearance. Nor had we any prejudice 
against lords. On the contrary, our prejudice was 
in their favor, and we were greatly disappointed. 
,"What!" said we to ourselves, "are these lords? 
Why, they look like men just come from behind 
counters, and those of the least manly description." 
It was the fashion at that time to wear light-colored 
small clothes and white stockings, and this custom 
added to the effeminacy of their appearance. But 
their faces ! What poor-looking expression was 
there ! What weakness ! What a negation of all 
purpose and energy ! We came away, quite morti- 
fied for our chivalrous notion of the peerage, — of 
the relations of the Bolingbrokes and Peterborough s, 
and never heartily recovered the impression after- 
wards. 

From time to time we were shown a lord in a 
stage-box or on horseback. They were nothing 
different from other men, except that we fancied 
a look of higher self-possession, — perhaps because 
they were lords. Doubtless there was often a con- 
scious look which the spectator might take for self- 
possession, or assumption, or pride, or dignity, 
according to his preconceived notions. Pope talked 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. II9 

of the "• nobleman look," but said that Wycherley had 
it as well as Bolingbroke, which shows that it had 
nothing to do with rank.* He meant the look of 
self-possession, in its most graceful aspect. The per- 
son the most answering to the received idea of a 
nobleman, whom we ever saw, was the late Duke of 
Grafton. We remember him coming out of the Uni- 
tarian chapel in Essex Street, with his staid gloved 
hands, tall person, hook nose, and cocked hat sur- 
mounting all, like the father of a generation of Sir 
Charles Grandisons. Junius would have given a dif- 
ferent account of his inner nobility. It was consci- 
entious in him, however, to go to the Essex Street 
Chapel, and he was a very respectable-looking man, 
— not in the gig-keeping sense. 

Lord Castlereagh, the only time we saw him, — 
which was many years before his death, — struck us 
as being something of a dandy. He was in nankeen 
pantaloons and a green coat ; but he had as fine a 
face as man could well have, with little intellect in it. 
If nobility could have a patent ft^ce, — a countenance 
appropriated to rank, apart from the look of wit and 
talent, — it would look like him. But then he had 
been occupied in important work. No lord looks 
good for anything who is a mere lord, and by far the 
greatest number we have seen were of this class. 
Lord Eldori, who is a judge, and of plebeian origin, 
casts as fine an eye upon you in passing along the 
streets some years ago, as could be looked for in a 
" learned gentleman ; " and yet law has made it come 

* Hazlitt writes admirably on this subject in the paper On the Look of a 
Gentleman, in The Plain Speaker. — Ed. 



I20 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

to nothing. Lord Ellenborough had the glance of a 
clever man, but his face was clouded with a look of 
burly stubbornness. The face of the nobleman we 
have always looked at with the greatest interest is 
Lord Holland's. We felt thankful for his elegant 
literature, his advocacy of liberal opinions, and above 
all, his never-failing protests in the House of Lords 
when an ignorant or ungenerous measure was car- 
ried. But we have seen him only at a distance. Let 
his black eyes and his shrewd looks, however, say 
what they may, they say nothing in behalf of his 
rank : for he is a wit, and could do without it. 

We were once going down Bedford Row, when we 
saw a little mean-looking man ascend the steps of a 
house, give a good knock, and ask the footman a 
question. The footman answered with a face, the 
expression of which amounted to contempt. It was 
as much to say, " What does such a shabby-looking 
fellow as you want with my master, and why do you 
take upon yourself to give such a knock? " The little 
man, turning to go away, took out a card, and gave it 
the footman. The reader should have seen the fel- 
low's manner at sight of this card ! He saw " Lord " 
upon it; and his face, shoulders, arms, legs, and soul 
fell instantly into a profound respect and humiliated 
repentance. We omit this lord's name, but nobody, 
most assuredly, would have taken him for a noble- 
man, — unless, indeed, a footman might have done 
so; for footmen, being conversant with lords, ought 
to know of what aspects they are capable. 

Not long after this we happened to sit next a lord 
in a box, who swore much at a debutante in n com- 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 121 

edy, and said she was the " d — dest impudent little 
devil he ever saw in his life." At the same time he 
clapped a speech of hers with as much energy as his 
hands could bring together, for he too was a fragile 
little fellow. We begged to know the reason of this 
apparent contradiction ; and he said, " O, I like her 
impudence of all things ; it's devilish amusing." 
This was candid, and we had nothing to object. It 
was also professional, — of the " order," — for it up- 
held claims without merit, and stood by a sort of 
"privilege of peerage," — the right that impudence 
has to be on a par with impudence. 

The next lord we remember seeing, whose patent 
was put to the test, was the colonel of a body of vol- 
unteers, who were assembled in the courtyard of a 
great house in Piccadilly, in expectation of seeing 
him for the first time. Suddenly it was announced 
that he was coming. The great gates were thrown 
open, the band struck up, the regiment presented 
arms: enter my lord on a white charger, and, byway 
of introduction to his men, is pitched right over the 
horse's head. Thus (as the moral of a fable would 
say) the being a lord does not render a man a good 
horseman any more than it renders him modest, or 
wise, or handsome, or strong, or genteel, or even 
such a man as can be safe in the experience of a 
footman. 

We were standing once at a book sale behind two 
gentlemen, one of whom, by his voice, we recog- 
nized to be the late John Kemble. The other was of 
the same stature as the actor, not so gentlemanly 
in appearance, and had his hat set knowingly on the 



122 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

top of his head. Mr. Kemble, addressing him as 
" My Lord," made us curious to see his face. The 
actor's face we saw very weU. It was turned side- 
wise towards the great unknown, exhibiting all the 
dignity of its Roman profile ; and the tone, high in 
dignity as in sound, in which the actor spoke, inter- 
ested us extremely, considering the rank of the person 
he was conversing with. Ou a sudden this person 
turned rapidly towards his acquaintance, exhibiting 
his profile in turn, and letting us into the secret of 
his voice. The effect was ludicrous. The noble* 
man's person had given us a manly idea of him 
enough, though there was a dandyism in his bearing 
not of the genteelest kind ; but his face ! and his 
voice ! The first was like a premature old woman's, 
the second worthy of it, — at once high, mumbHng, 
and gabbling. A little staring eye surmounted this 
odd imbecility. He rapidly uttered a few shufiling 
sentences, forming a most singular contrast with the 
lofty and measured tones of the actor ; and we thought 
how much better the latter would have acted the 
nobleman ofl' the stage than the former upon it. How 
ludicrous, indeed, the noble lord would have appeared 
in any serious character, on or ofi'! 

The next time we fell in company with a lord, he 
was talking on the subject of art, which he did very 
badly. We did not know who he was, nor was 
he acquainted with all the persons present. Some- 
body made a remark in dissent ; we expressed (in all 
civility) our agreement with it. The stranger, who 
had a veiy insipid countenance, said nothing, but con- 
trived to throv/ into his face an air of nonchalant 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 1 23 

assumption, which appeared very odd. The secret 
was explained when we learnt wdio he was. But are 
these, we thought, the manners of high life? Ave 
such the people that think to dispense with objection, 
and are these the faces their absurdity begets them ? 
Who would have known this lord from an arrogant, 
mean citizen? His appearance is not a jot better. 

Does the reader remember a little, withered old 
man, who used to emerge on tine days into his bal- 
cony in Piccadilly, take a chair there, 

" And sun himself in Huncamunca's eyes " ? 

His business, it was said, was to watch the ankles of 
the ladies and the conscious giggle of the serving- 
maids. But he mixed it with wiser matter. He 
was taking a " reverend care of his health." Stories 
of milk baths were told by the smiling passengers, 
of the doctor ever in attendance, and of the good 
done to old gentlemen by the company of pleasing 
faces and milk-maid breaths, without of necessity 
involving anything erroneous. This old lord (the 
Duke of Qiieensbury) had been a great turf-man in 
his youth ; we know not what he was famous for in 
more advanced life. In old age he was eminent for 
sitting in a balcony and looking stupid. He was 
immensely rich. He probably could hav'e had eighty 
thousand beefsteaks for his dinner every day. The 
money for these he left at his banker's, while he dab- 
bled with a little spoon-meat, and his neighbors toiled 
all day to get a steak for their wives and children. 

We leave this point to the reader's reflection. — 
1830. 



124 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 



A LETTER 

On, to, and By the Book-Personage known 

BY THE Name of " The Reader." 

DEAR Sir, or very dear Madam : Among the 
various phenomena of the Hterary world (to 
begin in proper book style), you have heard, doubt- 
less, of editors who write letters to themselves, and 
are. very much their humble servants, " Qiiidnunc," 
and " Philalethes." In other times the highest and 
the lowest periodical writers were equally given to 
this species of correspondence ; the former in the 
excess of their wit, the latter because they get nobody 
but themselves to be their Constant Readers.* Of 
late years, such is the exuberance of literature, in Mr. 
Jerdan's, as well as the grammatical sense of the 
word, that we believe the custom survives with none 
but the very newest and worst setters-up of a publica- 
tion. These gentlemen, here and there, are still 
auto-epistolary. One of them is his own " Impartial 
Observer," and differs with himself, " though with 

* Mr. Spectator gleefully confesses that he is guilty of writing letters to him- 
self. " I often choose," he says, "this way of casting my thoughts into a letter, 
for the following reasons. First, out of the policy of those who try their jest 
upon another before they own it themselves. Secondly, because I would extort 
a little praise from such who jvill never applaud anything whose author is known 
and certam. Thirdly, because it gave me an opportunity of introducing a great 
variety of characters into my works, which could not have been done had I 
always written in the person of the Spectator. Fourthly, because the dignity 
spectatorial would have suffered had I published as from myself those severe 
ludicrous compositions which I have ascribed to fictitious names and characters." 
Spectator, No. 542. — Ed. 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 1 25 

deference to his superior judgment." Another is 
happy to subscribe to his own opinion, being, at the 
same time, a subscriber to his " interesting miscel- 
lany ; " and a third, sitting in his editor's room, and 
despairing of success with his " widely-circulated 
journal," is his " sincere well-wisher and admirer, 
Thomas Jones, Appleby." A certain descrijDtion of 
gentlemen '* about town" are said to have made great 
use of this epistolary talent, and been half the wo- 
men of their acquaintance ; and a tribe of doctors, 
resembling them, have been enabled to bear such 
grateful testimony to their own merits as to acquire 
an extensive correspondence of the ordinary kind, and 
write themselves into an equipage and a mansion. 

But you have yet to learn that a man may write a 
letter to himself and not be aware of it; nay, that all 
his readers but one may join him in the correspon- 
dence, and all be in the same predicament. You are 
now this minute doing it, so are they ; and, what is 
more, myself, who am the sole exception, are you 
and they too. I am the editor and all his readers. I 
am a lady of quality and a blaeksmith ; I am a sol- 
dier, and at the same time a clergyman ; a dandy and 
a quaker ; an old lady and a young one ; a man of 
yesterda}^, and yet Martial addressed epigrams to me ; 
an intimate friend of Sophocles, and yet Sir Walter 
is continually bespeaking my good opinion. In short, 
I am the little, big, slender, robust, young, old, rich, 
plain, poor, handsome, male, female, and neuter per- 
sonage, known by the name of '' The Reader." I 
am you^ Reader, whatever you may think of it, and 
you are all of us. You address your prefaces to me, 



126 THE VVISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

and have others addressed, for the same reason, to 
yourself. I am the Benevolent Reader of the old 
books ; also the Courteous, the Indulgent, and the 
Impartial, but, above all, the Discerning. The affec- 
tation of independence in modern writers has induced 
them to leave off addressing me by some of these 
epithets, yet my good v^^ord is still bespoken as the 
Indulgent and the Candid ; and if I am not always 
styled the Discerning, it is not the less given me to 
understand that I am so. I should like to see the 
author that ventured to treat me otherwise. It is 
true, a hint is now and then ventured about '^ com- 
monplace readers," and " readers of the ordinary 
description : " but these are mere words. I will ven- 
ture to afhrm, that \i the Reader ever chose to inquire 
whether it was he that was intended by those petulant 
appellations, the writer would infallibly say no. The 
Reader is always treated with respect. The least 
thing said to him, is, that he is 'Requested:" — the 
Reader is requested to do so and so ; to " observe," 
or to " bear in mind." It is also asked whether he 
will be " kind enough " or " good enough" to do this 
and that. Furthermore, being a man, he is of ne- 
cessity a gentleman, as surely as the cobbler before 
the hustings ; and inasmuch as he is of the female sex, 
he is fair; — the fair Reader; — "our fair Readers 
will do us the honor to observe," &c. 

It is in this corporate character that I now address 
you. Being The Reader^ I am everybody who reads, 
and therefore may safely speak in the first person ; 
for nobody quarrels with himself in the person of an- 
other, however willing he may be to contemplate his 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 1 27 

merits in him ; at least, it requires a rare stretch of 
philosoph}^ to do so, and the modesty is sure to be 
accompanied by something that consoles it. 

As a reader of a ripe age, who was deep in the 
gilt nursery books of the last century, it may be al- 
lowed me to regret the cessation of those quaint old 
dreams of wood-cuts, now confined to ballads on the 
w alls, or only reprinted for the benefit of the curious. 
I acknowledge the superiority of the present engrav- 
ings, and allow our new infant self, if he has any taste 
for the fine arts (which is not always the case), to 
''quiz" the stuck-up attitudes, blotted eyes, and im- 
possible legs and arms of our old King Pepins and 
worthy London apprentices. But there was some- 
thing remote and ideal in those very deficiencies in 
the likeness to things known. Such a London ap- 
prentice as that mighty for aught you know^, thrust 
his arms down the throat of two lions, conveniently 
gaping on each side of him, and pluck out their hearts. 
Such a little boy as King Pepin, all eye and flapped 
waistcoat, might come to be a man wonderful, and 
ride in his coach. We do not defend the rewards 
generally promised in the infant literature of that 
period, such as coaches and great puddings, though 
the private taste seems to lie a good deal that way 
still. Neither w^ill w^e stand by the morality of Master 
Jemmy the bad boy, and Master Jacky the good one, 
the former of wdiom is bound to be eaten by lions, 
while the latter becomes Lord Mayor ; for it is now 
doubted by philosophers in the city, wdiether every 
Lord Mayor was a good little boy ; and also, whether 
every naughty boy goes to Africa or comes to the 



138 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

poorhouse. Such determinations of events will nr^t 
be allowed in this refining age, philosophers them- 
selves being sometimes poor, and rich men not always 
having been good. We are aware that the great eye 
of this generation looks rather to the general good 
than the particular example of success, and inculcates 
a handsome prudence, which, allowing folly its ex- 
cesses, saves it from bad blood, and encourages it to 
grow wiser. We have nothing to say against that; 
but still we may be allow^ed to admire the picture- 
cuts of Master Jemmy and Master Jacky, now so 
happy at home, playing their battledoor and shuttle- 
cock, and then both, methinks, so unhappy after- 
wards, — the one devoured by roaring lions, and the 
other stuck up in his fine coach without his brother. 
To the impressive dead bodies of " Smith, Jones, and 
Robinson," in Mr. Dilworth's Spelling-Book (was it 
not? ), who would swim in the water when they were 
•told to remain on dry land, and to the awful admon- 
itory figure of the schoolmaster in his cocked hat, 
with one finger up, we cannot refuse our respect. It 
is somewhat begged of us, we grant, by early habit, 
and by the sight of those stark-naked, pale pieces of 
stiffness on the ground ; to say nothing of the warm and 
well-clothed teacher. " The great teacher, Death," 
and the hardly inferior solemnity of the teacher aca- 
demical, divide the awfulness between them. Other- 
wise we could have wished that Death and a little 
daring had not been brought so peremptorily together. 
But things may have been good at a former period 
which are not desirable at present. 

As ''the reader" of the present times, nothing 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. I39 

comes amiss to us. We find all ages and conditions 
agreeably lumped up together in the food provided for 
them. The little children's books are fit for grown 
people to read ; and the grown people are obliged to 
be universal in their knowledge, for fear of not having 
answers to give to the little children. Pictures also, 
the realization of the dreams of books, abound more 
than ever. 

Even our amiable old friend, the Elements of Mo- 
rality, rich with its " fifty copper plates," is nothing 
to the "one hundred and fifty" in a modern volume 
of Arabian Nights ; and then for cheapness, we have 
the same delicious work for five and sixpence ; all 
Shakespeare for ten shillings, and loads of acted 
plays and farces at threepence the set, like ginger- 
bread. As to songs, we get them at a penny the 
hundred. I'd be a Butterfly is about the value of a 
wafer and a half, and so is that public piece of pri- 
vacy, O, no, we never mention Her, which piece of 
reserve, when it first came out, we heard two fellows 
whispering in the ear of the town along Regent Street, 
with all the delicacy of a couple of gongs. 

We are afraid there may appear some confusion in 
this letter between the reference to our general char- 
acter as " The Reader" and our own particular book 
inclinations. But something of this must be pardoned, 
if it be not of too exclusive a description. The Reader^ 
after all, is a human being, and must sometimes be 
content to represent particular bodies of men rather 
than the whole fortuitous'world of perusers. Above 
all, it is to be presumed that he is a genuine Reader; 
— that is to say, really fond of books ; and as such, 
9 



130 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

there are many feelings which he will have in com- 
mon with the whole genus of bookworms. There is 
sometimes a f:ilse The Reader^ — that is to sa}', one 
who is appealed to by authors whom nobody reads, 
or who is a mere chance taker-up of a book, in which 
he has no more right to recognize himself under that 
title than a fly who should walk over it. Mr. Jacob, 
an unheard-of nan;)e in our times, was a reader of this 
sort a hundred years ago ; and our friend Mr. Jerdan 
is one at present. I shall, therefore, proceed to con- 
sider myself in one light as the Reader appealed to by 
authors ; in anotlier, as the Reader fond of reading 
them. 

And here, my dear friends, I cannot but lament the 
cessation of those pleasing epithets of Benevolent 
and Candid, which 1 have before mentioned, and 
wliicli tended to keep up the good qualities they 
spoke of. It was easy to see whether the author was 
trying to cajole us, or only paying the proper compli- 
ment to our virtue. If he was a good fellow, it was 
all as it shoidd be ; if otherwise, he was only in the 
right with regard to ourselves ; zve^ the Reader, were 
still candid, and benevolent, and intelligent, but we 
smiled at his endeavors to deceive us, and called to 
mind what the philosopher says about hypocrisy, — 
" the homage which vice pays to virtue." It is true, 
we dismissed the man a little more charitably than 
might have been the case had he been less civil ; but 
charity is desirable towards everybody.* 

* "Why is it that we hear no more of Gentle Readers? " asks Southey. in The 
Doctor. " Is it that, having become critical in this age of magazines and re- 
views, they have ceased to be gentle? But all are not critical." With what 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 13I 

Lector benevole had a pretty sound in Latin ; so 
had candide and amice. " To the Reader " is not so 
well ; it is too unceremonious, or, at least, unsocial. 
There is neither respect nor cordiality in it ; and, 
somehow, to an Englishman, the Italian a chi Icgge 
sounds worse. Neither is "Advertisement" alto- 
gether to%be approved; — "Advertisement to the 
Reader ; " it is too dry and official. In French it 
looks hardly decent — Avis an Iccteur. I am aware 
that the same words in difierent lanofuacres have dif- 
ferent shades of meaning, but the root is the same. 
" Advice to the Reader " is to be found in old Eng- 
lish books. The French phrase has even passed 
into a proverb. It means putting a man on his guard. 
This, to be sure, is a useful proceeding with some 
books, and would be more so if other people, instead 
of the author, had the writing of the advice. Hov/ 
pleasant it would be to be able to preface one's ene- 
my's book with such a v^'arning : to forestall a criti- 
cism, or give a notice " Sur la vie et les ozcv rages.'' 
Every vian his ozun other man s preface would be 
handsome dealins". 



sweet reverence and loving humor Hawthorne, in the preface to The Marble 
Faun, writes of that "friend of friends, that brother of the soul," the Gentle 
Reader. *' The antique fashion of prefaces recognized this genial personage," 
he says, "as 'the Kind Reader,' the 'Gentle Reader,' the 'Beloved,' the 'In 
c'ulgent,' or, at coldest, the 'Honored Reader,' to whom the prim old author 
was wont to make his preliminary explanations and apologies, with the certainty 
that they would be favorably received. I never personally encountered, nor 
corresponded through the post with this representative essence of all delightful 
and desirable qualities which a reader can possess. But, fortunately for myself, 
I never, therefore, concluded him to be merely a mythic character. I had 
always a sturdy faith in his actual existence, and wrote for him year after year, 
daring which the great eye of the Public (as well it might) almost utterly over- 
looked my small prodi.c.io is." — Ed. 



132 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

During the period when Latin was the common 
tongue of Hterature, and it required scholarship to 
read as well as write a book, it is agreeable to see the 
importance which the Reader bore in the mind of 
everybody connected with the work, — author, print- 
er, and publisher. The book was, perhaps, dedi- 
cated to some lord or great man, some IJmstrissimo^ 
whose light has long since disappeared ; or some Vir 
Amplissimus of a Dutchman. He was the ostensible 
patron. The titles were set forth in a grotesque of 
Dutch and Latin, rich as the efflorescence of his coat 
of arms ; and perhaps his arms themselves were 
added, thirsty with leopard's faces, and threatening 
with daggers. But he was not " The Reader." Not 
he. Perhaps he could not read the work. Lords in 
those times were not the wits and geniuses they are 
now. Some little preface by itself was pretty sure to 
be added lectori benevolo^ bespeaking his good opin- 
ion with a tibi comniendo^ and reminding him of it 
with a vale I We, " The Reader," now almost swal- 
lowed up in that more formidable noun of multitude, 
the Reading Public, were then one of a select portion 
of society, like the doctors of a university ; and 
though we acknowledge ourselves reasonahly lost 
among the many, and, indeed, assisted in bringing 
about the great light that has put out our college 
lamps, we cannot but take a pleasure in turning over 
those evidences of our old importance, and fancying 
ourselves bowing like a polite judge on the bench to 
the appeals of our learned brothers the Elzevirs and 
the Giunti. This is one of the secrets of the link be- 
tween the Bibliomaniacs and saner readers. Any 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 1 33 

book was worth something in those times; and, by 
the courtesy of scholastic habits, it remains so still. 
But rarity made it a great deal more so, and therefore 
nothing is so precious to the Bibliomaniac as the pos- 
session of a rare copy. It diminishes the advantages 
of the rest of the world ; — gives him a value in his 
own eyes which he could not otherwise possess. We 
do not say this invidiously. Partaking to a certain 
degree of the Bibliomaniac ourselves, and at the same 
time being liberal-minded towards all the world in 
our capacity of ^/le Readc7' universal, we live, either 
to vindicate our dusty superiority, or allow our ab- 
sorption in the common wit, just as the whim is upon 
us ; and as so many books are venerable in our eyes, 
every book^ in some measure, becomes so by reason 
of its book-nature. Bibliophllus sum; nihil biblici 
a me alieiziim piiio. Only let a writer address us 
handsomely, and it is hard if w^e do not find some- 
thing to commend in his work, even sliould it be only 
in the address. We confess that we love to respond 
to those deferential appeals made to our wisdom and 
good qualities. Nothing can be said out loud between 
author and reader ; but the sympathy is not the less 
understood. "• The Reader," says the author, "will 
have the goodness," — we have the goodness. " The 
Reader will undoubtedly perceive," — undoubtedly 
we do perceive. " We need not inform the intelli- 
gent Reader," — you certainly need not; but let us 
have it. 

Good-natured Ovid is the earliest writer we can 
call to mind, who established a direct intercourse be- 
tween the Reader and himself. We feel all the differ- 



134 ^^^ WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

ence he describes between our comfortable situation 
at hoQie, and bis cold and solitary exile ; and doubly 
sympathize with the man, from the compliment paid 
us by so famous a poet. It is the only instance of 
the kind we recollect, in which Rome cuts a domes- 
tic figure in one's imagination, instead of being the 
great domineering city, paraded by consuls, and 
looking warlike or Ciceronian. For Pliny, somehow, 
does not make us enter cordially into his fine houses. 
We, the Reader, were then a wit and fine gentleman 
about town, under the eye of Augustus; hatless, and 
gowned ; and, as Arbuthnot says of that prince, with- 
out glass to one's windows or a shirt to one's back. 
The Reader, to wit, ourself, need not be informed, 
that ancient reading, being in manuscript, was much 
more confined than it is at present. In Greece we 
were a philosopher, an historian, a poet; latterly a 
grammarian, a collector of epigrams, or a mystic. 
What are ordinary readers now were then listeners 
to the poet's lyrics, or audiences at an Olympic game 
or a theatre. And it was the same in the age of chiv- 
alry. Hence the addresses of the poets to their 
harps and audiences. Milton covenanted with us 
("the Knowing Reader") for the performance in due 
time of an epic poem ; but when lie had gloriously re- 
deemed his promise, he spoke of us as an auditor ; — 
" Fit audience find though few." For a long time 
we were either a professed minstrel, or else a clerk or 
ecclesiastically learned person, as distinguished from 
the laity. Chaucer and others helped to extend our 
jurisdiction. Our friend Caxton, in the reign of Ed- 
ward the Fourth, addressed his History of Prince 



ESS A S AND SKETCHES. 1 35 

Arthur to us, under the title of " the Christian Read- 
er." By this time we had included the people of 
quality, both male and female, to whom he accord- 
ingly proceeds to address himself. These gave rise 
to the term '' Gentle Readers," our gentleness at that 
time consisting, not in its modern etTeminate qualities, 
but in having high blood in us, and being qualified 
to knock people on the head. Caxton, however, 
judiciously distinguishes between such as " desire 
to read " and such as " desire to hear read." By a 
subsequent edition of this work, it may be seen how 
we had increased our body corporate among the ple- 
beians ; for the editor takes upon himself to be in- 
solent. '-Thus," says he, "reader, I leave thee at 
th)^ pleasure to read, but not to judge, except thou 
judge with understanding. The ass" (think of that 
said nowadaN's to ''the reading public!") ''is no 
competent judge between the owl and the nightin- 
gale, for the sweetness of their voices ; cloth of arras 
or hangings of tapestry are not fit to adorn a kitch- 
en ; no more are kettles, pots, and spits to hang in a 
lady's bed-chamber ; neither is it becoming for a man 
to censure that which his ignorance cannot perceive, 
or his pride and malice prejudicate or cavil at." — This 
fellow must have been a knight, at least. 

An author who is uneasy with his readers has gen- 
erally good reason to be so. We like him in propor- 
tion as he is the reverse ; that is to say, provided he is 
worthy of our company ; and more especially, if as in 
Ovid's case, he does it honor. With what reverence 
do we not receive those personal communications 
vouchsafed us by such writers as Milton, and imper- 



136 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

tinently called impertinences by the critics ! How 
we love them in writers of a tenderer cast, and en- 
joy their gayet}^ in the more lively ! Scaliger. speak- 
ing of the delightful egotism of Montaigne (would 
that all good authors were as modest as he, and not 
afraid of com.mitting their dignity !), asks " what the 
devil it signifies whether he liked this wine or that?" 
It signifies that he understood the social part of lis, 
and that he was not an arrogant critic, who thought 
himself too good for his readers. When Fielding 
arrests the progress of one of his narratives to tell us 
of the little parlor in which he was writing with his 
children about him, how thankful do we not feel for 
his good-natured humanity in thus letting us into his 
domestic difficulties, — in giving the picture at once 
the zest of a pain and the cordiality of a pleasure ! 
How does it not make us wish, that all men, not ill- 
inclined, could know and understand one another; 
could see how much pain they can endure, and how 
much pleasure bestow ! 

"The Reader's" loss of consequence nowadays, 
as we have before observed, is his gain ; that is to say. 
" The Reader" is going out, because all are readers. 
The newspapers and magazines speak of us as " our 
readers." We are sometimes directly called " the pub- 
lic," and scavengers and beadles address us, with talents 
that used to be confined to the clergy. Still there is' 
"The Reader" properly so called, that is to say, the 
Reader genuine and fond of reading; and as such we 
have still our tastes and our distinctions. We often 
read at breakfast and tea ; are sometimes observed 
reading even in the streets, — not out of ostentation, 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. I37 

but because we cannot leave our friend at home : na}^, 
if dining alone, we like to have the book open beside 
us, or will stick it up against the loaf, and devour 
salad and Sir Walter at the same time. 

We find no obstacles in the streets. We thread the 
multitude as easily as a fish does the sea among his 
fellows, or a blind bat avoids chairs and tables in a 
room. We keep a sort of eye, without seeing it, to 
the gutter ; and have the path down a hill before us, 
vvithout trying to keep it.* We prefer, however, 
green lanes, or a lane with bookstalls, stopping occa- 
sionally to compare notes with the blackbirds, and 
always stopping to look at the books. In the latter 
case, we make a display of the volume in our hand, 
lest the stall-man should confound it with one of his 
own. If we put it in our pocket, we fancy he will 
see it sticking out as we move ofi', and make hasty 
search before we get out of sight. We fancy he will 
think it a Waller, " price 9d.," or a description of the 
German Spa, or Marcus Antoninus's Meditations, or 
some modern writer (perhaps ourself!), "same as 
sells at five shillings ! " 

A lounge in summer against a bank or the new- 
mown hay, has been too often described to be dwelt 
on. In doors, if the season be fine and warm, a sofa 



* Herein differing from book-loving Charles Lamb, who, in his Detached 
Thoughts on Books andReading, says, " I am not much a friend to out-of-docrs 
reading. I cannot settle my spirits to it. I know a Unitarian minister, who 
was generally to be seen upon Snow Hill (as yet Skinner's Street was not), be- 
tween the hours of ten and eleven in the morning, studying a volume of Lardner. 
I own this to have been a stram of abstraction beyond my reach. I used to 
admire how he sidled along, keeping clear of secular contacts. An illiterale en- 
counter with a porter's knot, or a bread-basket, would have quickly put to flight 
all the theology I am master of, and have left me wor&c than indifferent to the 
five points." — Ed 



138 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

is the thing, after a walk, with the bahny substitution 
of slippers for boots, and a new work to begin ; or, say, 
the fifth chapter of a new novel, where you turned 
down a leaf, and were at a most interesting passage. 
The ivory knife to cut open the leaves with, is also 
pleasing. We cannot but think there is a kind of 
sensual pleasure in it. We must not dwell upon the 
pleasure of reading in bed, turning first one elbow 
and then the other, and finally lying upon one's back, 
wondering we did not choose that happy posture at 
once. The custom is dangerous, and conscientious 
readers leave it off, if they are not sure the candle will 
be put out. A book behind the pillow for morning, 
is another thing ; or even for the chance of reading, 
if 3''ou wish it, though you never do. But we shall be 
reverting to particular tastes. As to winter time, we 
believe it will be allowed by all catholic perusers, 
that an elbow-chair, and a foot on each hob, is the 
most luxurious enormity. 

1830. "The Reader." 



DR. DODDRIDGE AND THE LADIES. 

THIS is another volume of the work* which ex- 
cited so much attention and amusement, as 
disclosing the livelier part of Dr. Doddridge's char- 
acter, and his fuiulness for the ladies. We mean to 
say nothing against the doctor's reputation. His 
fondness was kept within legal bounds, and only 

* The Correspondence and Diary of Philip Doddridge, D. D., &c. Edited 
from the original MSS. by his Great-grandson, John Doddridge Humphreys, 
Esq. Vol. IV. London, 1830. » 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. I39 

overflowed in a double stream of benevolence towards 
the fair sex, — in a pleasing mixture of piety and 
gayety, — a double wish to please and to be pleased. 
But the public were amused to see a name, which 
had hitherto partaken, however mildly, of the com- 
mon gloom in which Dissenters stand with the world, 
suddenly invested with a radiance of gallantry and 
hilarity, as if Venus had taken an arch pleasure in 
throwing a light upon him from the clouds, and show- 
ing that doctors are men. 

It is a pity to think that there are persons who find 
fault with this new light, and think it unbecoming 
the seriousness of a dissenting minister's reputation. 
It is lamentable to see how hard men can struggle to 
keep up painful pretensions and false notions of piety, 
— what ingenious steps tliey take to have as little 
comfort and to maintain as great a portion of vice as 
possible, in order to indulge upon the one the spleen 
which the other occasions. A great scandal was 
lately excited among the ascetics of the Catholic 
church (luckily a very small body now) by the dis- 
covery that the celebrated Bossuet, the proud cham- 
pion of the Roman faith, the St. Paul of the French 
court, was in love, and wrote billets-doux. Thev 
might well dislike it, for there was reason to be- 
lieve that the poor bishop, on the strength of the aus- 
terities exacted of him, had an actual mistress, and 
so was made a hypocrite. If Doddridge had been 
one of his clergy, he would very likely have been 
a hypocrite too, though of a more charitable order. 
The Catholic church, in this matter, is filled by its 
tenets with lies and contradictions ; the worst and the 



140 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

best men are alike induced to sin, the former because 
they are gross and double-dealing, the latter because 
they have the strongest sympathies ; and thus all come 
to practise hypocrisy in common, and real vices are 
propagated by false virtues. However, these absurdi- 
ties are diminishing every day. 

Dr. Doddridge was an amiable man, of a sprightly 
blood, and of a hectic temperament, which ultimatelj' 
threw him into a consumption. His views were too 
cheerful for his doctrines, which he was accused of 
accommodating to different companies ; that is to say, 
his charity predominated, and he found out, in his va- 
rious texts, something to enliven ever3'body he came 
nigh. Men of other complexions, who were uneasy 
with themselves, preached from uneasy texts : he took 
up the cheerful ones, and made everybody grateful 
wherever he went, talking to the old of Methusalem, 
and comparing the ladies to Eve in Paradise. Accord- 
ingly he was adored by all classes and ages. Doors 
flew open to receive him ; men pressed his hands ; old 
ladies fell in love with him, and young ladies, who 
were not allowed to fall in love, beatified his wife, 
and wrought ornaments for her person. The first 
characteristic thing we meet with in the volume be- 
fore us is a " splendid apron " which " dear Miss 
Scott" wrought on purpose for Mrs. Doddridge, and 
with which the doctor felt himself "quite over- 
whelmed." The editor speaking of it as now exist- 
ing, says it is " one of the most costly and beautiful 
that can be imagined. Groups of ranunculuses and 
other flowers are represented by colored silks, re- 
lieved with gold ; and a butterfly is introduced with so 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. I4I 

much skill, that it may almost deceive the eye." The 
doctor, who was an elegant poet, addressed her the 
following seraphical lines upon it : — 

TO MISS SCOTT, 

ON HER PRESENTING MRS. DODDRIDGE WITH AN EMBROIDERED APRON. 

Too lovely maid, possess'd of every art 
To charm the fancy and command the heart, 
The bloom of Paradise thy needle paints. 
Thy song's the echoes of celestial saints ; 
And the blest youth, to whom thy love is given, 
Will pass through Eden, on his way to Heaven. 

Alas! noblest youth (more shame for him) took a 
road so delightful. Miss Scott, whom her father 
called a " Protestant Nun," from her devotion to works 
of charity, and who was a poetess as well as a pain- 
tress, died a maid. There were not enough Dr. Dod- 
dridges to appreciate her. It is astonishing how^ many 
people one longs to have married in old times, purely 
to rescue one's sex from the disgrace of unfeelingness. 

This poor girl subsequently fell into a state of re- 
ligious gloom (owing to those infernal doctrines of 
Calvinism, which the doctor's happier condition en- 
abled him to throw off) ; but it does not appear to 
have succeeded in overwhelming her. Her health 
was bad, and she mistook the gloomy impressions 
resulting from it for an irreligious state of mind. In 
the present volume are some affecting letters which 
passed between her and the doctor ; and pretty strong 
instances of the light in which she regarded him. 
We fear he ought to have turned Mussulman, or not 
written verses. 

The doctor was too ready an admirer of all charm- 
ing women not to have the good wishes of any one 



1-^2 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

of them. Mrs. Doddridge should have secreted his 
letters from her fair friends. At page 91, he writes 
thus to her : " On Tuesday I dined with Mr. Faw- 
cett's mistress: a sweet girl truly (he had said in a 
previous letter, that her temper was like his wife's), 
fair as alabaster, with black eyes and hair, a pretty 
little mouth, and wantmg only a little more color in 
her cheeks, which now and then I gave her. These 
sons of Levi (Mr. Fawcett was a minister) take for 
their wives the best of the flock, and it is but Jit they 
should.'^ 

Mrs. Doddridge is somewhat startled at the " pretty 
little mouth," and musters up some correspondents in 
his absence ; and a colonel, to give him a counter hint 
with ; but all in great pleasantness and good humor. 

" I heartily rejoice," she says, " in the prosperity 
of all my friends ; but permit me to tell you, my 
dear sir, that I am a little in pain for your constan- 
cy, and think I have some reason, when you seem so 
transported with those genteel young ladies, with 
their black eyes and alabaster complexions ! with 
pretty little mouths too ; indeed, I think I have much 
more to apprehend from them than from the good 
old lady of eighty-one you told me of some time 
ago ; however, I will endeavor to comfort myself, 
that notwithstanding all these powerful temptations, 
your constancy will be as inviolably secure as my 
own, and more I cannot wish it to be, though per- 
haps should I tell you this is the third letter I have 
written by this post! so extraordinary a circum- 
stance might give you a suspicion that I am carry- 
ing on some intrigue in your absence ; but I need 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. I43 

do no more to remove it than to tell you the names 
of my correspondents." 

The colonel was the famous Colonel Gardiner, 
who from a man of pleasure became hypochondri- 
acal, and saw a gfhost.* 



* This is the story, as related by Dr. Doddridge in his biography of Colonel 
Gardiner: "The major had spent the evening (and, if I mistake not, it was 
the Sabbath) in some gay company, and had an unhappy assignation with a 
married woman, whom he was to attend exactly at twelve. The company broke 
up about eleven ; and not judging It convenient to anticipate the time appointed, 
he went into his chamber to kill the tedious hour, perhaps with some amusing 
book, or some other way. But it very accidentally happened, that he took up a 
religious book, which his good mother or aunt had, wltliout his knowledge, 
slipped into his portmanteau. It was called, if I remember the title exactly, 
The Christian Soldier, or Heaven taken by Storm, and It wns written by Mr. 
Thomas Watson. Guessing by the title of it that he would find some 1 hrasos of 
his own profession spiritualized In a manner which he thought might afford him 
some diversion, he resolved to dip into it ; but he took no serious notice of any- 
thing, and yet, while this book was in his hand, an impression was made upon 
his mind (perhaps God only knows how) which drew after It a train of the most 
important and happy consequences. He thought he saw an unusual blaze of 
light fall on the book while he was reading, which he at first imagined might hap- 
pen by some accident in the candle. But lifting up his eyes, he apprehended, 
to his extreme amazement, that there was before him, as it were suspended in the 
air, a visible representation of the Lord Jesus Christ upon the cross, surrounded 
on all sides with a glory : and was Impressed as if a voice, or something equivalent 
to a voice, had come to him, to this effect (for he was not confident as to the very 
words), ' O sinner ! did I suffer this for thee, and are these the returns ? ' But 
whether this was an audible voice, or only a strong impression on his mind 
equally striking, he did not seem very confident ; though, to the best of my 
remembrance, he rather judged it to be the former." But, according to that 
"shrewd, clever old carle," Rev. Dr. Carlyle of Inveresk, who knew Gardiner 
well, Dr. Doddridge has marred this story, "either through mistake or through 
a desire to make Gardiner's conversion more supernatural, for he says that his 
appointment was at midnight, and introduces some sort of meteor or blaze of light 
that alarmed the new convert." But this was not the case, adds Carlyle ; " for 
I have heard Gardiner tell the stoi-y at least three or four times, to different sets 
of people, — for he was not shy or backward to speak on the subject, as many 
would have been. But it was midday, for the appointment was at one o'clock ; 
and he told us the reason of it, which was, that the surgeon or apothecary had 
shown some symptoms of jealousy, and they chose a time of day when he was 
necessarily employed abroad in his business." 

Carlyle nl:o maintains tht\t ns Gardiner told thestor^' there w?5 nothing super- 



144 "^^^ WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

At page I02 is a letter to Mrs. Doddridge in the 
Somersetshire dialect, which shows the vivacity of 
the doctor's spirits. Certainl}^ he was the gayest Cal- 
vinist on record. At page 44 we find him catching 
maids at sea. " If you consult the map (he observes), 
you will see, by comparing the date of my last, that, 
like the sun, which is still in the tropic of Cancer, 
or like the crabs which I yesterday caught, I am now 
in a kind of retrograde motion, or at least go side- 
ways. I could not refuse the importunity of my 
friends here (happy for me that I. was not a woman) ; 
but came back in a chaise which they sent for me on 
Sunday night, and preaclied (wicked worm that I 
was) an evening lecture after my other work ; but 
this being a singular instance, you will, I hope, excuse 
it, especially as I was well enough to rise at five yes- 
terday morning, and to make a voyage down the 
river, which is ten miles to the sea : when I had the 
pleasure of meeting thirty-five sail of ships, and of 
catching a great number of soles, plaice, flounders, 
and crabs, with two lobsters, and a^air Maid ! who 
immediately threw herself into a- very natural atti- 
tude, and frisked about with a strange kind of motion ; 
and as far as I could judge by the strong action of the 
muscles of her face, and especially of her mouth, made 
a very pathetic motion in a language I did not un-- 
derstand. The name, however, she had the honor to 
bear, and her resemblance to your very agreeable 

natural in it. It was the book, and not a supernatural appearance that con- 
verted Gardiner. " He was so much taken with this book that he allowed his 
hour of appointment to pass, never saw his mistress more, and from that day 
left off all his rakish habits, . . . and the contempt of sacred things, and became 
a serious good Chr'stinn ever after " — Ed. 



ESSAYS AND SKETCPIES. . I45 

sex, impressed me so far that had not my compan- 
ions been less compassionate than myseh', I beheve 
she had still been sporting with the river nymphs, 
and perhaps celebrating the courtesy of that gallant 
knight to whom she became a captive. But I must 
assure you, my dear, that though she was detained 
in the vessel, nothing passed between us that could 
give you any reasonable umbrage ; and, fair as she 
was, these lijDS have not yet touched her ! nay, so 
insensible is my heart to the charms of her whole 
species, that I give it you under my hand that I had 
rather have a single shrimp, than as many of these 
fair creatures as would stock a Turkisli seraglio." 

Our gallant doctor is always paying compliments 
to his wife, who appears to have deserved them. 
His accounts of the compliments he receives from 
other ladies, and the charming reception he is always 
meeting with from the most amiable families, must 
have put her faith in him to some test. He does 
not spare it a handsome trial ; and yet he contrives 
to make the trial a ground of homage. His kindness 
seems to have been on a par with his vanity ; and 
that is saying much for a flattered man. He says 
at the close of the above letter about maids, — 
" But to be serious, it was a very pleasant day, and 
I concluded it in the company of one of the finest 
women I ever beheld, who, though she has seven 
children grown up to marriageable years, or very 
near it, is herself still almost a beauty, and a person 
of sense, good-breeding, and piety, which might as- 
tonish one who had not the happiness of being in- 
timately acquainted with you. 
10 



146 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

" I am just returning in the vehicle in which I came 
from Ipswich ; Providence has there also strangely 
cast my lot in one of the most friendly and agree- 
able families I have met with ; and absolutely, as I 
am informed, the best in the whole town, though 
not that which I intended to have visited. Mr. Wood 
is extremely obliging. Everything is done that can 
be to make me, if possible, forget you ! and yet 
every circumstance serves a contrary purpose. The 
more agreeable the persons I see about me, the more 
am I reminded of her who is most agreeable ; and 
the more pleasurable the scenes I pass through, the 
more do I wish to share them with you, and by 
sharing to double them. 

" But I forget that a young lady has done me the 
honor to invite me to breakfast with her ; and par- 
don my vanity, when I tell you it is one who was 
pleased to say that she would have gone a thou- 
sand miles for such an interview with me as she 
enjoyed last week. She is, I perceive, mistress of 
a handsome house and independent fortune ; but be- 
lieve me, that should such things as these happen 
to me every day, I should still rejoice that I am, 
" My dearest Love, 

" Securely and entirely yours, 

" P. Doddridge." 

At page 50, he says, — 

" I have been partaking of a most elegant supper ; 
but I solemnly declare, that a crust of brown bread 
and a draught of water with you had been a feast 
far exceeding it. A thousand things which once 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. I47 

seemed romantic, grow plain sober sense when re- 
ferred to you. But I can add no more. My dearest, 
farewell. These tedious days of absence will come 
to a conclusion, and I shall, for a while at least, 
lose all my cares, were they a thousand times great- 
er, in your delightful society." 

The following passage, from one of the doctor's 
scientific friends, reminds us of Buffon's theory of the 
earth, which he thought was struck by a comet from 
the sun. 

" I do not know what use is usually assigned to 
the sun's motion ; but we know that motion is essen- 
tial to all terrestrial fire ; and why may it not be so 
to the solar fire likewise? Motion produces fire, and 
keeps it burning. And, by the way (since you are 
upon experiments), let me hint to you a pretty micro- 
scopical one, if you have it not already. Strike fire 
with a flint and steel on a sheet of paper ; gather 
up the dust and put it into your microscope, and 
you will see round iron balls ; which shows that the 
motion of striking heats the steel even to fusion, so 
that every spark is a drop of melted steel, which 
forms itself into a sphere, for the same reason that 
the drops of rain are globular. Many of these liquid 
spheres will be broken and thrown into irregular 
shapes by their falling on the paper before they 
are sufliciently cooled ; but you will see many per- 
fect spheres. My third magnifier shows them as big 
as peas." 

Behold (as the French say) a letter from Mrs. 
Doddridge, which shows that she is resolved not to 
be surpassed by the doctor in loving, however she 
yields to him in other sciences. 



148 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

" Dearest AND BEST OF Men : Did I know tenderer 
epithets, I should certainly use them ; but even Mrs. 
Evans herself cannot help me to one ; for though she 
sa^s you are an angel, even that does not suit me 
so well whilst I myself am quite a mortal. 

" She has formed a very dangerous conspiracy 
against me upon your return ; fatal indeed to my re- 
pose, should it succeed ; but I make myself per- 
fectly easy about it, .and believe, how great soever 
your friendship for Mr. Evans may be, you would not 
choose to change wives with him, at least not at pres- 
ent. But, indeed, my dearest, your three last delight- 
ful letters have made me a bankrupt in everything 
but love ; that, however, is a stock on which you 
may largely and freely draw ; and give me leave to 
tell you, dear sir, you shall not, nor cannot, exhaust 
it ; for, though I most readily yield you the superi- 
ority in everything else, here I must and will con- 
tend with you, at least for an equality, and could 
you see my heart, you would there behold it written 
in characters which neither time nor age can erase. 
But, alas ! so great at present is our unhappy distance, 
that, as Mr. Pope observes upon a like occasion, were 
even the scheme of having a crystal placed in the 
breast to take place, it could be of no service to us ; 
and therefore we must, in this instance, as well as in 
many others, content ourselves with believing what 
we cannot perceive." 

Hallo! At page 182 we find Dr. Doddridge, the 
grave divine, the Family Expositor, reading the 
Wife of Bath's Prologue " to Nancy, this afternoon," 
and taking his share " in the laugh it raised." 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 



149 



" I slept last night as comfortable as I ever did in 
my life, and my cold is so well to*day, that, whereas 
I could scarcely speak five words together eight-and- 
forty hours ago, I have been able, without any diffi- 
cult}^, to read the Wife of Bath's Tale (Prologue, he 
means) to Nancy this afternoon, and to take my share 
in the laugh it raised. My fair auditor was particu- 
larly edified with those lines : — 

There swims no goose so Rray, but soon or late 
She finds some honest gander for her mate. ' 

But of that by the way." * Nancy (a Miss Ann 
Moore) good-humoredly disdains the application of 
this couplet in a postscript. We hope she was 
the lady who boxed his ears at page 253. The 
doctor w^as certainly very provoking sometimes, be- 
twixt the severity of his doctrines and the gayety of 
his conversation. He was bound, we think, either to 
have preached other doctrines, or not have been so 
lively. The above anecdote is a curious instance of 
the freedom of our pious ancestors, with regard to the 
books they would read in company. Do we think 
their descendants more virtuous in not reading them? 
Not a jot. We think them apparently more consis- 
tent with their doctrine, but more hypocritical in prac- 
tice ; though we see a preferment in the preceding, 
which it certainly does not look for. The truth is, 
their doctrines are not so fixed as they used to be ; 

* It was Pope's version of the Wife of Bath's Prologue that the doctor read 
to Miss Nancy. Here is the original of the lines quoted above : — 
" Ne non so grey goos goth ther in the lake, 
(As sayst thou) that wol ben withoute a make." — Ed. 



150 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

anti they do not know whither such freedom might 
lead those, who are as Httle certain as they are. 

In a letter from Warburton to Doddridge, we have 
the opinion of that celebrated robustious divine on the 
amount of happiness in human life. It is expressed 
with his usual force. " Though I be extremely cau- 
tious," he says, " what sect I follow in religion, yet 
any in philosophy will serve my turn, and honest 
Sancho Panza's as well as any ; who, on his return from 
an important commission, when asked by his master 
whether they should mark the day with a black or a 
"white stone, replied, ' Faith, sir, if you will be ruled 
by me — with neither, but with good brown ochre* 
What this philosopher thought of his commission, I 
think of human life in general : good brow7i ochre 
is the complexion of it." 

Warburton had been living at his friend Allen's, 
and living too well. His blood w^as getting too but- 
tery and episcopal. We recollect mentioning to the 
late Mr. Hazlitt, that a celebrated living writer had 
declared his belief in the predominance of evil in the 
world, calling it "an awful fact." — "He had just 
lost his money," said that shrewd observer. The 
French have a phrase of seeing things "in rose- 
color." We have no such phrases in this country : 
we eat and drink too much, and get too much money, 
and think that evil predominates. There is enough 
evil, surely, to mend, particularly in our system ; but, 
for our part (and we have had care enough too), we 
no more beheve that evil predominates, compared 
with good, than we believe the sensations of ordinary 
health to be disagreeable instead of pleasant. Man- 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. I5I 

kind, generally speaking, enjoy a great deal of good, 
and all their best impulses press them forward to the 
attainment of more and better. The cheerful French 
have found out these secrets, and we cannot do better 
than follow them in promoting the discovery. Hear, 
as one step towards it, Warburton's opinion of 
Young's Night Thoughts. The book, to be sure, curi- 
ously enough, is not so popular with us as in France ; 
but the French can afford to like melancholy books. 
A luxurious contrast is furnished to their vivacity. 
In England, a melancholy thought gets hold of us, 
and worries us like a dog hanging at a bull's nose. 
" I hope," says Warburton, '' the MS. poem you 
mentioned in your last, will be more in the Chris- 
tian spirit than Dr. Young's ' Night Complaint,' — a 
dismal rhapsody, and the more dismal for being full 
of poetical images, all frightful, without design or 
method ; so that I have thought, as Mr. Pope's motto 
to his Essay on Man was, — Know yours el-f: so the 
motto to this should be, — Go hang youi' self ; for 
what has any man to do else under that perturbation 
of mind the author seems to be in? Yet one does 
not know what to think of him. He appears rather 
to be under a poetical than a religious dilemma, by 
the straining and heaving of his thoughts." The 
secret was, that Young was a parasite and a prefer- 
ment-hunter, who failed in his views, and only had 
too much ! He was melancholy for want of a mitre. 
We now come to the story of the Box on the Ear. 
" While the doctor," says his editor, " was ever ready 
to yield the chastening charms of female society their 
proper influence, he was far from abrogating the just 



152 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

prerogative of masculine swiiy — an amusing instance 
of which occurred in a mixed company, when the 
superior authority of the ' lords of the creation' was 
duly vindicated, as the following anecdote will 
avouch. 

" Dr. Doddridge and a lady of his acquaintance 
were once disputing before a large company concern- 
ing the authority of the husband over his wife, when 
the doctor overcame in the argument ; and the lady, 
unable to restrain herself on being vanquished in so 
tender a point, arose from her chair, and going up to 
the doctor, half in jest, half in earnest, gave him a 
stroke with her fan. The doctor, on receiving this 
rough treatment, looked a little grave, and after a 
silence of a few minutes, spoke the following lines, 
to the visible confusion of his blushing antagonist : — 

•Fidelio once most unhappily said, 
However, such nonsense came into his head, 
That the Sex he had loved and studied so long 
Had their fancies and passions a little too strong. 
Sabrina grew warm at a charge so unjust ; 
To plead for the Fair she was ever the first ; 
And their wisdom at once in her anger appears, 
When to answer his Reasons she boxes his ears.' " 

We have said the doctor was a provoking man ! 
There was more in his provocations than appears on 
the face of them, and the present case was probably 
no exception. It is necessary to know who the lady 
was, before we can pronounce her conduct so unfeini- 
nine as it appears to have been. Was she married 
or unmarried? Was she rich or poor, healthy or 
sick, happy or unhappy ? Considerations connected 
with any of these circumstances might have mingled 
with the aro;ument, and warmed her blushes with 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. I53 

more glows than one. We will not condemn her till 
we know, even though the flap of her fan was some- 
thing equivocal ; nor can we allow the justice of the 
doctor's triumph, till we see what right- he had to be 
so very argumentative and superior. It was too bad, 
in a man so amiable and so well off, to have the best 
of an argument, as well as a charming wife, and heaps 
of admiring friends, fair and brown. He should not 
have overthrown the ladies in a dispute, and set him- 
self to making verses, while they were getting up. 

The heretical doubt respecting the lady of sixty, in 
the following letter, would have perplexed poor Miss 
Scott. " I had on Saturday," the doctor writes to his 
wife, " the pleasure of seeing Shakespeare's tomb and 
epitaph, as also the monument of a celebrated person 
who died at sixty, and a maid, if her tombstone Jibs 
not. She came from Nonsuch (the Italics of this 
word are the doctor's own), in Surrey, and is buried 
at the feet of the Lady Carew, whose waiting-woman 
she was, and who, that she (Lady C.) might continue 
a maid no longer, is said to have jumped out of a 
window three stories high/' In the chancel of Strat- 
ford church the doctor meets with " a charming lady," 
with whom he " would have been glad of further con- 
versation," and who was " indeed a woman of sur- 
prising sense," though not equal to Mrs. Doddridge. 
He is always meeting with ladies so charming, and 
welcomes so delicious, and lives in such a world of 
love, festivity, religion, and locomotion, that he re- 
minds us of the famous John Buncle. We should 
have thought John's character drawn from him, if he 
had married five wives, and been a Unitarian. 1830. 



154 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 



CONFECTIONERY. 

ONE cannot open this book * without fancying 
that one scents all the good things that we see 
mentioned in it, — the cakes, candies, creams, ices, 
preserved fruit, — the raspberry tarts, and the sirups 
of violet. Mr. Gunter, whom " the gods have made 
poetical," and who quotes Greek, Latin, and Italian 
for his purpose, justly claims for his art something of 
a superior elegance to that of all others connected 
with the table. We except the Fruiterer; but his is 
not more of an in-door than an out-of-door art. The 
Fruiterer belongs to all times of the day, and all 
places except the high street ; wiiereas pastry and 
confectionery must be eaten housed. There is a 
sort of sophistication connected with them which 
does not do for pure nature. The little boy is the 
only person that can eat his bunn in the face of heaven 
and not be ashamed. And we suspect, that with all 
the helps of Mr. Gunter, no masticator of jelly cakes, 
or meringues, eats his felicity with half the satis- 
faction that he did his bunn when he was a little 
boy. 

The superiority of confectionery and pastry over 
other cookery consists in its association with fruits 
and grain. A cookery-book reminds one of the 

* The Confectioner's Oracle, containing Receipts for Desserts, &c., with others 
for Pastry-Cooks, and an Elucidation of the Principles of Good Cheer. Being 
a Conipanion to Dr. Kitchener's Cook's Oracle. By VV. Gunter. 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. I55 

shambles. The Confectioner talks to ns of sugars, and 
oranges, and violets. He lives in quite another world. 
He is of the garden and the dairy. Eve, who " tem- 
pered dulcet creams," was the mother of his pretty 
girls in the pastry shops. Cookery did not begin 
till after the fall. We confess, if our bad habits 
would let us, we would never eat joint more, but 
stick to this paradisiacal eating, and have blood 
made up of raspberries and the rose. It is not 
moral weakness that prompts us to the wish, any 
more than bodily weakness would follow it. To 
get out of the necessity of beef eating, would be to 
get out of the necessity of excitement and clouded 
energy. The weakest stomachs are those which 
assimilate best with flesh already made. To take 
to a sudden course of living upon fruits and farina 
might endanger it ; but he that had never lived on 
anything else would probably beat us all. The late 
General Elliott, whose picture, by Sir Joshua, may be 
seen in Pall Mall, stout, military, with a nose as 
energetic as his cocked hat, lived entirely on fruit 
and vegetables. 

But to our author. Mr. Gunter seems to be two, 
if not '* three gentlemen at once," in his book. There 
is, first, the gay, bantering, scholarly Gunter, superior 
to his trade, and tossing his quotations about him, 
from the Greek and Latin ; there is the professional 
Gunter, important in his undertaking, and piquing 
himself on the patronage of his lords and ladies ; 
and, finally, there is the Gunter of the frontispiece, 
sitting beside a table with a fowl on it, and looking 
as melancholy as the first is gay. He seems to have 



156 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

no appetite to his dish, but rather to be deploring the 
bad digestion of some previous one, one of his hands 
being in his waistcoat, and his face looking incredu- 
lous of the pleasures of this world. This Gunter 
may be the second, but he ought not to have been so 
candid in his lemon peel. Great men cannot always 
afford to be seen in their simplicity. He should 
have given us a head of himself in its smartest con- 
dition, like Mr, Ude or Mr. Farley, and not have led 
the reader to suppose that a Confectioner can look 
mortal. 

To the Gunter in his professional state we have 
nothing to object. We take it for granted that his 
cakes and jellies are made after the most exquisite 
fashion, otherwise the f^icetlous Gunter could not 
have introduced " Earl Fowls " making a speecli in 
his favor. In the Advice to Confectioners, we have 
a sketch of the history of the science, more smart 
than satisfactory ; and in the ajDpendix we are pre- 
sented, in a most unexpected and disinterested man- 
ner, with remarks on digestion, and earnest advice to 
take care of one's health, by air, temperance, and 
exercise. Such Is the march of intellect, like those 
of the white ants, over one's very table, and so 
thoughtful does an eater of pastry become in spite 
of the vivacity of his set-to. Tins reminds us that 
Mr. Gunter may say what he pleases against cooks, 
as distinguished from pastry-cooks, but of all the 
substances taken Into the daring stomachs of men, 
the physicians tell us (and we believe them) that 
there is none so difficult to conquer, and so provoca- 
tive of horror in the struggle, as the compound of 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 157 

flour and fried butter, known to the unsuspecting 
under the innocent name of pie-crust. The boy goes 
on bearing it for a long time, but, as he grows older, 
" shades of the prison house" begin to close in upon 
him, as Mr. Wordsworth says, — that is to say, of 
pie-crust; for it is clear, by the speculative melan- 
choly of that poet, that he has been a large eater of 
it in his time. -'The child," he says, "is father to 
the man," — that is, begets all the habits of the grown 
person ; and pie-crust, he may depend upon it, is the 
origin of much melancholy blank verse and theologi- 
cal dilemma.* We except this from the innocencies 
of our pastry, unless our readers are fox-hunters, or 
run about as they did in the days when pie was bliss. 
In that case they may eat anything. 

But we have another objection to make to the ele- 
gant Gunter, which is, that in endeavoring to exalt 
his art into new regions of the sweet, he becomes 
profane, and talks of love and the ladies ! • Now, we 
must never have two such things as love and the love 
of eating brought together. If eating, in its most 
innocent shape (as no doubt may be the case), is 
found in connection with love, care must be taken to 
distinguish one love from the other, and not confound 
their metaphors and their sympathies. Here is Dr. 



* Holmes's Autocrat, you may remember, once took more of his landlady's 
pie than was good for him, and had an indigestion in consequence. " While I 
was suffering from it," he says, "I wrote some sadly desponding poems and a 
theological essay, whicli took a very melancholy view of creation. When I got 
better, I labelled them all ' Pie-Crust, ' and laid them by as scarecrows and solemn 
warnings. I have a number of books on my shelves that I should like to label 
with some such title ; but as they have great names on tl^eir title-pages, — Doc- 
tors of Divinity some of them, — it wcu dn't do." — Ed. 



158 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

Kitchener, in the introduction, represented as talking 
of the " epicurism of the sex," and recommending 
Mr. Gunter to give " a sort of electrical and thrilling 
impulsion " to all the ladies ! We hope they will be 
on their guard the next time they see him. He is an 
accomplished but dangerous man. In the same place 
we are told that the eating of a delicate confection, 
compared with that of a ragout, is like the finer feel- 
ing of a "second love" compared with "the undis- 
tinguishing ardor of a first attachment ;" and in 
the appendix, an appetite, which requires exciting, is 
likened to " the lukewarm heart of a husband" made 
warmer by the " caresses of his wife." We beg the 
lady patronesses of Mr. Gunter to put a stop to these 
profane images. There is an elegance in the pleas- 
ures of confectioner}', which does not extend to every 
sort of eating ; but the grosser part of both sexes 
have already a notion that eating and loving are 
entertainments of the same family ; and if those who 
understand the matter do not interfere, we shall have 
horrid women — or, rather, no women — laying 
down the laws of beef and afiection over the dinner 
table, and making out that people have no mind to 
anything but body. Miserable creatures ! Nobody 
can have a mind to theirs. They never bring to- 
gether the two ideas of love and woman. They are 
women and lobster sauce, and fit only to be loved by 
cannibals. They are '"'' fond''^ of fish! An ogre 
would be "fond" of them. 

Ladies and sweetmeats may undoubtedly be brought 
together, and there are occasions when love and sweet- 
meats may be so. There is a pretty instance of it in 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 



59 



a scene In La Fontaine's love-making novel, called 
the Family of Halden. Mr. Gunter tells us, that 
"English Meringues" are an especial favorite with 

the Marchioness of C ; in whose praises, and 

those of her lovely daughter, he could " almost" write 

a poem out of gratitude ; that Lady De R was 

the first who introduced into high life the artificial 
jelly candy, which " melts in the mouth, leaving a 
charming titillation on the tongue ; " and that jelly 

cakes owe their celebrity to Lady Julia H d, of 

whom it is said that " the change of her maiden name 
of C. arose from the very elegant manner in which a 
plate of them was pointed out to her by her present 
lord, and the few words of his musical voice which 
accompanied the foUtesse of the moment. 

" What great events from, &c., &c." 

and then our author signs his initials to the note that 
conveys this Interesting Information, — " W. G." — 
This is innocent, but we should protest against hear- 
ing of the jelly cakes afterwards, and finding them 
turned Into Images of bliss. 
1 .830. 



l6o THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 



A TREATISE ON DEVILS.* 

IT is much easier to conceive a good spirit than a 
bad one, not only because the latter is useless 
and his sufferings absurd (nature refusing to allow of 
suffering beyond a certain pitch, and no infliction of 
ill warranting or making reasonable a further and 
worse infliction, except for the good of all parties), 
but because malignity, which is a devil's character- 
istic, and which is understood to mean the love of 
injuring another for the injury's sake, is found, upon 
a due knowledge of evil and its causes, to be a thing 
altogether fictitious and impossible. The worst of 
men does not injure another because, abstractedly, he 
would do him a mischief, but in order to get rid of 
some pressure of evil upon himself. Take the envi- 
ous man, the revengeful, the murderer for the sake of 
gain, — or what seems worst of all, the murderer for 
the sake of murder, — and, tracing the causes of his 
offence with a humane and a thoughtful eye, we shall 
find that it is out of some imaginary disadvantage, 
some sense of infelicity or inequality, or some morbid 
want of excitement, frightening the poor inconsider- 
ate wretch himself even more than he frightens others, 

* This treatise was published soon after the appearance of Sir Walter Scott's 
Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft, with the following preface or introduc- 
tion : " Humbly submitted to those who require something more on the subject 
than is to be found in the late work upon Demonology, and particularly to such 
of them as are zealous for the extirpation of unworthy notions of God and 
man." — Ed. 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. l6l 

that induces him, under the notion or the impulse of 
procuring relief to his own desires, to thrust his evil 
upon the head of another. And the worse and more 
wicked we could suppose a creature to be, the more 
(not to speak it profonely) woula be his excuse ; be- 
cause the more dreadful would be the disadvantage 
under which he lay, the more tormenting his infe- 
licity, and the more grievous (if it could never be 
made smooth for him) his wrong. Pain, like a heap 
of brambles, shows us our departure from a right 
path ; and melancholy it seems that pain should be 
necessary, even supposing it to exist only in the 
younger period or first renewals of a world, after 
some catastrophe interrupting its bliss, and before 
the new wilderness can be cleared ; but as all evils 
are not so evil as we suppose them, so we know from 
all that we can know (and nothing gives us a right 
to pronounce further, especially in contumely of what 
is good) that the worst evils are fugitive, and the 
greatest crimes are mistakes. For all these reasons 
(the world feeling them more and more as it grows 
enlightened), there comes up by degrees a suspicion 
that it is better to say as little as possible, in a serious 
way, of such anomalies as devils: — in a little while 
people are allowed to doubt them, then to laugh at 
them, and finally, except among the grossly ignorant 
or superstitious, devils remain fit subjects for notliing 
but jests, and caricature, and the voluntary gravity of 
the black-lettered. 

As to those writers and others, who continue to 
preach a doctrine which they despise, out of a notion 
that the delusion is necessarjto mankind, — that men 
II 



l62 THE WiSHING-CAP PAPERS. 

are so wicked as to require terrors to keep them in 
awe, — and other half reasonings of that sort, it is a 
great presumption in them, in the first place, to as- 
sume a privilege of exemption from those duties of 
veracity to which they would fain tie the rest of the 
world ; and, secondly, they harm their own natures 
by it, and maintain themselves in an ill opinion of 
the world in which they take themselves to be the 
wisest persons. They rule it (as they think) by false- 
hood, and yet are weak enough to lament that it is as 
bad and false as it is, and a " vale of tears." Now, the 
world is neither so bad nor so unhappy as many sup- 
pose it, though, assuredly, there is sorrow enough in 
it to make us anxious to wipe the tears out of its 
eyes ; but this is not to be done by the use of the 
very falsehood we lament, by adding to what is al- 
ready evil in the world, — melancholy and perplex- 
ing ideas of things beyond it, and all this at a time 
when, the delusion being discovered, the signal is 
given for its destruction. As men, let us think none 
of us exempt from the virtues and sincerity of men ; 
nor, by taking ourselves for the gods of the foolish, 
imagine v^^e must have devils to keep the peace for 
us. Truth will do very well without them, if we 
suffer it to take its course. Are we to suppose our- 
selves better and wiser than all which it may find 
out for us? Who has given us the clew to discover 
that? 

With regard to the existence of one supreme devil, 
or conscious and wilful Principle of Evil (which has 
been doubted by the most orthodox, upon a due con- 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 163 

sideration of texts and Scripture),* it is not only con- 
tradictory to the received opinions respecting the 
omnipotence and beneficence of the Deity, but is a 
superfluity in common reasoning ; for as it is a maxim 
in logic, that when anything can be accounted for on 
one principle, it need not have recourse to another, 
and as it ought equally to be a maxim in common 
sense to choose the more agreeable principle of the 
two, it is much better to refer the origin of evil to 
that inert and insensible part of matter of which Plato 
speaks, and the hardness of v^hich causes a difficulty 
in the working it, than to set up, for the amusement 
of sluggish imaginations, the terrors of feeble ones, 
and the poor views of the worldly, a gratuitous ma- 
lignant spirit, equally absurd whether we consider 
the attributes of God or the necessities of common 
reason. And herein the celebrated living writer, who 
is as delightful in fiction as he appears shallow in phi- 
losophy, and who has addressed a book to a little 
child in which he condescends to preach the horrible 
doctrine of hell torments, ought, we think, to have a 

* As in the very word devil, which is a translation of the Testament, is 
assumed to be the meaning of the Greek word diabolos, though the letters signify 
^n accuser, and admirably fit the passage in that sense. For instance, — "Be 
sober, be vigilant," says the Apostle, "for your adversary the acc^iser walks 
about, seeking whom he may devour." What can be better than this construc- 
tion, or more natural in addressing a letter to an infant communitj', bound to be 
on their good behavior ? and why should the word be translated devil'? So in 
the famous passage in Isaiah, where the King of Babylon is so nobly apostro- 
phized under the title of Lucifer, or the light-bringer, son of the morning. Why 
should this be tortured into a prophecy of the devil, and the morning star be 
made synonymous with an imaginary infernal being ? It appears to us that a 
book written expressly on the subject, with the proper requisites of learning and 
philosophy, might now settle the pretensions of this infernal personage forever. 
We should envy the composer of such a work, and would do our utmost to 
second his benefaction to mankind 



164 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

deep sense of his shame and humihation : for it is 
cither a great weakness in hi in or a great insincerity. 
He says, in the preface to one of his novels, with an 
escape of cunning, brought upon him by the morti- 
fied vanity of a failure, that he will never go counter 
to public opinion ; or, to use his own words, will 
never " sail against the stream." * We need not say 
whether it is becoming in a man of genius to talk in 
this manner, for whatever reason ; but it is one thing 
not to sail against the stream, and another to go 
down with it in the company of the small craft of 
ignorance and hypocrisy. Imagination, however, 
carries a blessing with it in its own despite ; and the 
magic vessel, in this instance, while the captain is 
thinking of nothing but the flag he has hoisted in favor 
of old prejudices, has a stock of humanities on board 
that shall still benefit the world. 

It hardly need be observed, at this time of day, that 
Milton's devil is no real devil, any more than his 
divinity is really divine. The divine things in Para- 
dise Lost are the poetry and the humanity. As far 
as his devil partakes of these, the devil himself be- 
comes divine ; and as far as his Deity wants them, 
we feel that nothing can be flatter or more ungodly. 
Milton laughed at the vulgar idea of the devil, and 
disdained to degrade his fallen Archangel into horns 



* In Captain Clutterbuck's Introductory Epistle to the Rev. Dr. Dryasdust, 
prefixed to the Fortunes of Nigel, the author of Waverley is made to say, in 
speaking of the failure of the White Lady in The Monastery, that no one shall 
find him " rowing against the stream." " I care not," he adds, " who knows it, — 
I write for general amusement ; and though I never will aim at popularity by 
what I think unworthy means, I will not, on the other hand, be pertinacious in 
the defence of my own errors against the voice of the public." — Ed. 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 1 65 

and a tail. Had he delayed writing his poem some 
years longer, there is reason to believe that he would 
have disdained to degrade his Deity into a " school 
divine" and a sorry tyrant,* or to think that spirits 
in a state of perfect bliss and virtue could fall.j Such 
a god is not the natural God of a great poet ; and 
from some remarkable evidences, not only in his later 
works, but that transpired on proving of his will, it 
appears certain that he retired more and more from 
the vulgarities that had been palmed upon his infancy 
into the sacred recesses of his own thought, and 
found there no longer an unworthy deity. He had 
"■ edified" a chapel to himself; I and the music of 
his own organ now ascended into a nobler sky, giv- 
ing to his sightless eyeballs a right to look tranquil. 

No; the only genuine devil now extant is the 
proper old woman's devil, with horns and a tail, and 
he begins exceedingly 

" To pale his ineffectual fire." 

* " And God the Father turns a school-divine." — Pope. 

t " What to me is more wonderful," says the author of Robinson Crusoe, 
" and which, I think, will be very ill accounted for, is : — How came seeds of 
crime to rise in the angelic nature, created in a state of perfect, unspotted holi- 
ness? How was it first found in a place where no unclean thing can enter? 
How came ambition, pride, or envy to generate there ? Could there be offence 
where there was no crime ? Could untainted purity breed corruption ? Could 
that nature contaminate and infect which was always drinking in principles of 
perfection '' 

"Happy it is to me that writing the histoiy, not solving the difficulties of 
Satan's affairs, is my province m this work : that I am to relate fact, not give 
reasons for it or assign causes : if it was otherwise, I should break off at this 
difficulty, for I acknowledge I do not see through it : neither do I think that the 
great Milton, after all his fine images and lofty excursions upon the subject, has 
left it one jot clearer than he found it." — History of the Devil, p. 41. edit. 

1777- 

$ "A littel wyde 
There wa<! an holy chipprl edifyd?." — Spekser. 



l66 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

The old women themselves desert him. He loses 
his believers by wholesale ; is a very sorry and poor 
devil, and people quote Burns, and wish him out of 
his durance. Formerly he was identified with em- 
perors and archangels ; he was called the Prince of 
the Air; he had all the spirits of the terrestrial world 
given him for subjects ; the whole Pagan mythology 
was turned over to him, and when gods were forgot- 
ten, devils were made out of the fairies. He is now 
'' himself alone," deprived of his property, like Job, 
and sits amidst the ashes of his ruin in shabby misery. 
He has lost even his power to joke, which w^as one 
of the ghastliest things about him. He no longer 
laughs, and says, //o.^ //o! like another Henry the 
Eighth. He has nothing to say it for. If he is still 
black as a coal, with talons and saucer eyes, he is also 
lean as a rake ; no longer fat, as when he used to 
have those delicious dinners with the old wives, like 
a favored Methodist parson. His talons are of no 
use to him but to serve him like Job's ; and his saucer 
eyes now, indeed, for the first time, 

" Witness huge affliction and dismay," 

rolling about like a starved owl's in a trap, who has 
been caught there at noonday. 

Formerly he and his ministers were everywhere 
round about us, tempting us to ill, doing us all sorts 
of mischief, and laughing at it, and now and then 
raising storms of wind and rain, and thunder and 
lightning (which, not having been to school, they did 
not know were good things for us). . The powers 
granted him were no less prodigious than odd. If 



ESSAYS AND SKETCPIES. lO^J 

you wished anything at the devil, he took it. He 
disputed possession of you with your good angel ; 
and a silly old woman, in whom indigestion con- 
founded dreaming with waking, and who went fly- 
ing on the wings of her head vapors, had the power 
of making him a present of an immortal soul. 
What is more extraordinary, and shows us the dan- 
ger of giving an inch of ground to assumptions and 
things unproved, is, that old women, both male 
and female, having much to do with education, they 
habituated some of tlie most exalted understandings 
to believe in these rascalities of superstition, and we 
should infallibly have all believed in them to this 
day had not the excess of the demand upon their 
credulity in some other matters roused men of spirit 
and genius to vindicate the invaluable right of doubt- 
ing and inquiring, some of them (Luther for one) 
being all the while fastened with the grossest chains 
of superstition by the one hand, while they wrote 
against them triumphantly with the other. Let us 
be modest when we think of these things, but do not 
let us prove our modesty by adhering to errors upon 
which we have been enlightened. Let us reflect, 
rather, upon how many points we may still be mis- 
taken, and resolve to carry on the good work of im- 
provement in which those illustrious men set us so 
noble an example. 

We lay before our readers some amusing extracts 
from an old writer, both serious and comic, which 
will show them what was thought of devils by the 
contemporaries of Shakespeare. Not that he believed 
in any such nonsense, though he knew how to turn 



l6S THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

the poetical parts of it to account ; and in matters of 
speculation, as well as practice, was doubtless the 
most undogmatical of men. He and the other great 
poets of that time were accused of being exceedingly- 
sceptical, and there is evidence in them to show that, 
in a proper sense of the word, the opinion was true. 
We do not make an exception of old Heywood, who 
was author of some beautiful simple dramas, and 
from whom the chief number of extracts are taken : 
for though a touching writer, he was little of a poet. 
He had great feeling, but no imagination ; and it is 
not paradoxical to affirm, that if he had finer eyes for 
fiction, he would have seen farther into truth.* And 
so it is, vice versa^ of the mechanical philosophers. 
But to the passages in question. The first is very 
ghastly, on account of the quiet familiarity of shape 
in which the alleged devil makes her enU'ee. This 
is a great secret in horrid stories. 

" In the easterne part of Russia," saith Heywood, 
" about harvest time, a spirit was seen to walk at 
midday, like a sad, mourning widow ; and whoso- 
ever she met, if they did not instantly fall on their 
knees to adore her, they could not part with her 
without a leg or an arm broken, or some other as 
great mischiefe." — Hierai'chie of Angels, 

The chief of these noon-devils, according to the 
Rabbis, is a very singular personage. He has a head 
like that of a calf, with a horn shooting out of his 



* Thomas Heywood, who, says Charles Lamb, in his Specimens of English 
Dramatic Poets, "is a sort of prose Shakespeare. His scenes are to the full as 
natural and affecting. P.ut we miss the poet, that which in Shakespeare always 
appears out and abore tiio sur.ace of the nature^ — Ed. 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 169 

forehead ; is all over ox's hair, full of eyes, and rolls 
along like a tub.^ We shall take this opportunity of 
observing that, according to the Jews, all male devils 
have plenty of hair on their heads, while, on the 
contrar)-, female devils are bald. This is the reason, 
they say, why Boaz laid his hand on the head of 
Ruth. It was in order to assure himself that he had 
not a female devil in his chamber.f With us the 
shock w^ould be great, but we should certainly ac- 
quit the lady of enchantment. No Christian would 
say, "Eh, you little devil!" to a girl with a bald 
head. ^ 

A STORY OUT OF NIDERIUS. 

"Niderius telleth this story: In the borders of 
the kingdom of Bohemia lieth a valley, in wdiich 
divers nights together was heard clattering of ar- 
mour and clamours of men, as two armies had met 
together in picht battel. Two knights that inhab- 
ited near unto this prodigious place agreed to arm 
themselves and discover the secrets of this invisible 
army. The night was appointed, and, accommo- 
dated at all assayes, they rode to the place, where 
they might descry two battels ready ordered for 
present skirmish ; they could easily distinguish the 
colours and prevant liveries of every company ; but 
drawing neere, the one (whose courage began to re- 
lent) told the other that he had scene sufficient 
for his part, and thought it good not to dally with 
such prodigies ; wherefore, further than he was, he 
would not go. The other called him coward, and 

* Rabbinical Literature., Vol. II., p. 118. t Id., p. 104. 



170 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

prickt on towards the armies, from one of which a 
horseman came forth, fought with him, and cut off 
his head. At which sight the other fled, and told the 
sight the next morning. 'A great confluence of people, 
searching for the body, found it in one place, and the 
head in another ; but neither could discern the footing 
of horse or man, only the print of birds' feet, and 
those in miry places." — Hierarchie of Angels. 

This reminds us of the Tempter's Feast, in Mil- 
ton, which vanishes, 

•'With sound of harpies' wings and talons heard." * 

Birds' and goats' feet were thought to be unalterable 
accompaniments of devils, and rendered the boldest 
of them coy in their extremities. 

The following illustration, out of Heywood, of 
the promptitude of devils to avail themselves of any 
expression in their favor is one of the best stories 
abojut them we ever read. The reason is, that it is 
domestic, and touches upon the affections. The peril 
of the innocent and unconscious child in the hands 
of the swarthy visitors, furnishes a striking picture 
of contrast. 

THE BLACK DINNER. 

". In Silesia, a nobleman having invited many guests 
to dinner, and prepared a liberal and costly feast for 
their entertainment, when all things were in great 



* Paradise Regained, Book II., v. 403. Warton observes upon this passage, 
"that the sound of the wings and talons is much finer than if the harpies had 
been seen, because the imagination is left at work, and the surprise is greater 
than if they had been mentioned before." 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. I7I 

forwardness, instead of hi^ friends whom he expected, 
he only received excuses from them that they could 
not keep his appointment. Whereat the inviter, being 
horribly vexed, broke out into these words, saying, 
' Since all these men have thus failed me, I wish that 
so many devils of hell would feast with me to-day, 
and eat up the victuals provided for them ; ' and so 
in a great rage left the house, and went to church, 
where was that day a sermon ; his attention to which 
having tooke away the greatest part of his choler, 
in the interim there arrived at his house a great 
troupe of horsemen, very blacke, and of extraordinary 
aspect and stature : who, alighting in the court, called 
to a groome to take their horses, and bade another 
servant run presently to his master and tell him his 
guests were come. The servant, amazed, runneth to 
church, and with that short breath and little sense 
he had left, delivers to his master what had hap- 
pened. The lord calls to the preacher, and desiring 
him for that time to break off his sermon, and ad- 
vise him by his ghostly counsel what was best to 
doe in so strict an exigent, hee persuades him, that 
all his servants should with what speed they can 
depart the house. In the mean time, they, with the 
whole congregation, come within view of the man- 
sion : of which all his servants, as well men as maids, 
had with great affright delivered themselves, and for 
haste forgotten and left behind a young child, the 
nobleman's sonne, sleeping in his cradle. By this 
the devils were revelling in the dining-chamber, mak- 
ing a great noise, as if they had saluted and wel- 
comed one another : and looked throusfh the case- 



172 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

ments, one with the head of a beare, another a 
wolfe, a third a cat, a fourth a tygre, &c., filling 
bowls and quaffing as if they had drunke to the 
master of the house. By this time the nobleman, 
seeing all his servants safe, began to remember his 
Sonne, and asked them ' what had become of the 
child'? These words were scarce spoke, when one 
of the devils had him in his arms, and shewed him 
out of the window. The good man of the house 
at this sight being almost without life, spying an old 
faithful servant of his, fetched a deep sighe, and 
said, ' O me, what shall become of the infant! ' The 
servant, seeing his master in that sad extasie, replied, 
' Sir, by God's help I will enter the house, and fetch 
the childe out of the power of yon devils, or perish 
with him.' To whom the master said, ' God prosper 
thy attempt, and strengthen thee in thy purpose.' 
Whereon, having taken a blessing from the priest, he 
enters the house, and coming into the next room 
where the devils were then rioting, he fell upon his 
knees, and commended himself to the protection of 
heaven. Then pressing in amongst them, he beheld 
them in their horrible shapes, some sitting, some 
walking, some standing. Then they all came about 
him at once, and asked him what business he had 
there. He, in a great sweat and agonie (yet re- 
solved in his purpose), came to that spirit which 
held the infant, and said, ' In the name of God, de- 
liver this child to mee.' Who answered, ' No, but 
let thy master come and fetch him, who hath most 
interest in him.* The servant replied, ' I am come 
to do that office and service which God hath called 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. I73 

me, by virtue of which, and by his power, loe, I 
seize upon the innocent: and snatching him from the 
divell, took him in his arms and carried him out of 
the roome. At which they clamoured and called 
after, ' Ho, thou knave, ho, thou knave, leave the 
childe to us, or we will teare thee in pieces.' But 
he, unterrified with their diabolical menaces, brought 
away the infant, and delivered it safe to the father. 
After some few daies the spirits left the house, and 
the lord re-entered into his antient possession. In 
this discourse is to be observed, with what familiaritie 
these Familiar Spirits are ready to come, being in- 
vited." — Hiei'archie of Aiigels. 

Chaucer has a pleasant story to similar purpose, 
which is too long to repeat: but we cannot resist 
giving an abstract. A summoner (a bailiff of the 
ecclesiastical court) riding out on his vacation, over- 
takes a yeoman under the trees, in a green cloak, 
also on horseback. He bids him good-morrow, and 
the yeom.an asks him whether he means to go far 
that day. 

"This sompnour him answered, and said, ' Nay : — 
Here, fast by, ' quoth he, ' is mine intent 
To riden, for to raisen up a rent, 
That longeth to my lord his duety.' 
* Ah ! art thou then a bailiff? ' quoth he 
(He durst not, for very fillh and shame, 
, Say that he was a sompnour for the name), 

' De par Dieux I ' quoth this yeoman, ' leve brother, 
Thou art a bailiff, and I'm another.' " 

The two horsemen get social, and the summoner 
asks the yeoman where he lives, in order that he 
may know how to find him. The yeoman, " in soft 
speech," tells him that he lives " far in the North 



174 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

Countree " (the supposed quarter of the devils) : and 
adds, that he hopes to see him there shortly, and 
will give him such directions as he cannot possibly 
miss. 

After comparing notes, and agreeing that it is idle 
to have a conscience, the sompnour, who is very 
curious, requests to know his fellow's name. 

" This yeoman gan a little for to smile ; 

'Brother,' quoth he, 'wilt thou that I thee tell? 

/ am. a fiend ; my dwelling is in hell : 

And here ride I ahout my purchasing, 

To wot whether men will give vie atty thing.'' " 

" Benedicite ! " cries the sompnour ; " what say 
ye?" — The frightened church officer recovers him- 
self, and after some conversation, they agree to stand 
by one another in their callings. The yeoman is to 
take whatever people give to him ; the summoner 
what he can get; and if there is an overplus on either 
side, they are to share it. 

They come into a town, where a carman is swear- 
ing at his horses for not getting on with a load of 
hay : 

" Heit, Scot ! heit. Brock ! what, spare ye for the stones ! 
The fiend (quoth he) you fetch, body and bones : 
The dev'l have all, both horse, and cart, and hay." 

The summoner wonders that his friend does not 
take the man at his word, and seize on the team ; but 
the devil tells him that he does not mean what he 
says, as he will see presently. 

" This carter thwacketh his horse, upon the croup. 
And they began to drawer and to stoop, 
Heit, now ! (quoth he) there — Jesus Christ you bless, 
And all his handy work, both more and less I 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 1 75 

That was weil twitch' d, mine own Hard* boy : 
I pray God save thy body, and Saint Eloy." 

" There," said the devil, " you see ! " — The com- 
panions quit the town, and arrive at the hut of a poor 
widow, against whom the summoner has a warrant. 
He agrees to compound the matter, if she will give 
him twelve pence (a good sum in those days) : the 
poor woman protests that she could not raise such a 
sum in the whole world : the summoner gets enraged, 
says he will take away her "• new pan," and calls her 
names : upon which the woman gets angry in turn, 
and wishes him at the devil. 

"Unto the devil, rough and black of hue, 
Give I thy body, and my pan also. 
And when the devil heard her cursen so 
Upon her knees, he said in this mannere : 
' Now, Mabily, mine own mcither dear; 
Is this your will in earnest that ye say ? ' 
'The devil,' quoth she, ' so fetch him ere the day, 
And pan and all, but he will him repent.' 
' Nay, old stot, that is not mine intent,' 
Quoth this sompnour, ' for to repenten me 
For anything that I have had of thee : 
I would I had thy smock and every cloth.* 
' Now, brother,' quoth the devil, 'be not wroth : 
Thy body and this pan be mine by right. 
Thou shalt with me to helle yet to-night, 
Where thou shall knowen of our privity 
More than a master of divinity. ' 
And with that-would the foule fiend him hent : 
Body and soul he with the devil went." 

The devils formerly in request may be divided into 
ten classes : First, the old Oracular Devil, or Devil 
Pagan, who took upon himself to be Apollo or Jupi- 

* Liard, a name for a gray horse. 



176 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

ter, and is said to have occupied the shrines of those 
deities; an opinion which good old Plutarch (who 
was, in fact, the Reverend Mr. Plutarch, clergyman 
at Delphos) would have thought a blasphemy too 
horrible to be endured. 

Second, the Devil Vagabond, just mentioned, who 
went about seeking what he might devour, from a sum- 
moner down to a sauce-pan. He has since turned out 
to be a common shoplifter or thief; that is, when he 
taken a sauce-pan ; when he takes a summoner, he is 
an apoplexy. 

Third, the Possessing Devil, or Devil of the Exorcist, 
who was fond of inhabiting people's bodies, and made 
himself famous among the nuns. This turned out to 
be the chaplain. 

Fourth, the Amatory Devil, or Incubus, who par- 
took of the natin-Q of the second, and who, according 
to Chaucer, had disappeared in his time, being dis- 
placed by the Friar ; at which period perhaps the 
word Incubus was first rendered Incumbent. He is 
still clerical sometimes, but oftener a layman ; and 
may be seen haunting milliners' apprentices down Re- 
gent Street, in the likeness of a foolish youth ; or 
standing at a tavern door, sly and stupid, eying the wo- 
men's ankles as they pass. He is also the Nightmare. 

Fifth, the Devil Grim, or General Devil, wdio ap- 
peared in a proper diabolical shape, or was at least 
black and swarthy, and often went in a company, as 
may be seen in the story of the Black Dinner. He 
has totally disappeared. 

Sixth, the House Devil, or Devil Pranksome, with 
.whom the Fairies were confounded. He was a minor 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 1 7/ 

kind of class the second, and contented himself with 
knocking and making a noise, displacing furniture, and 
making the good people " knowe not what to think." 
He has been discovered to be a maid-servant. 

Seventh, the Wayside, or Out-of-Door Devil, also 
confounded with Fairies. He was a kind of Satyr. — 
" They sit," quoth Burton, " by the highway side, to 
give men falls, and make their horses stumble and 
start as they ride (if you will believe the relation of 
that hoh' man Ketellus, in Nubrigensis, that had an 

especial grace to see devils) If a man curse 

or spur his horse for stumbling, they do heartily re- 
joice at it ; with many such pretty feats." * 

Eighth, the Necromancer's or Astrologer's Devil, 
who came up when he was called by art ; explained 
the mysteries of the universe ; was a great statesman ; 
and promised riches and power. Some of his tribe 
(to use the libellous language of those days) were 
" mighty Dukes" and " Princes," having brute heads, 
and riding on horseback. f 

Ninth, the Attendant Devil, or Familiar, who was 
of various degrees of rank, from the accomplished 
imps that waited on Faustus and Agrippa, down to 
the cat of the old crone. See Goethe's and Marlowe's 
tragedies, and The Witch of Middleton. 



* Anatomy of Melancholy, Part I., Section 2. 

t See Reginald Scot's Discovery of Witchcraft, p. 229. 

" Thair first and principal king (which is of the power of the East) is called 
Baell ; who, when he is conjured up, appeareth with three heads ; the first like a 
toad, the second like a man, the third like a cat ; he speaketh with a hoarse voice. 
He maketh a man to go invisible : he haih under his obedience and rule sixty and 
six legions of devils. 

"The first duke under the power of the East is named Agares. He comeih 
12 



I7S THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

Tenth and last, the Devil Proper, or devil himsell', 
the Apollyon of John Bunyan. He was " the black 
man " of the nursery and the coal-hole ; and used to 
be called upon to take away children or swallow them 
up.* To his friends the witches, he used to appear 
either as a satyr or sort of clergyman, in black clothes, 
very reverend, dressed at it were for the evening. 
But his proper establishment consisted of a tail with 
a sting to it, " horns on his head, fire in his mouth, 
eyes like a bason, fangs like a dog, claws like a bear, 
a skin like a nigger^ and a voice roaring like a lion ; 
whereby (quoth Reginald Scot), we start and are 
afraid when we hear one cry Bough." f ^ face- 
tious churchman, being asked why the devil took such 



up mildly in the likeness of a fair old man " (there is something striking in this) 
"riding upon a crocodile, and carrying a hawk on his fist. He has under him 
thirty.-one legions. 

" Valefer, alias Malephar, is a strong duke, cometh forth in the shape of a lion 
and the head of a thief. He is very familiar with them to whom he maketh him- 
self acquainted, till he hath brought them to the gallows ; he ruleth ten legions. 

" Ftirfuris a great earl, appearing as an Hart with a fiery tail. Hehethin 
everything. 

"■ Ftircas is a knight, and cometh forth in the similitude of a cruel man, with 
a long-beard and hoary head. He sitteth on a pale horse. 

" Gamigin is a great marquess, and is seen in the form of a little horse. 

"Another marquess is a liar and horse-stealer. ' Zepar, a great duke,' makes 
women incontinent and barren. Berith is a 'great and a terrible duke,' and 
'also a liar.' " 

* According to the author of Mallezis MaJeficarwn, and " the residue of that 
crew," says Scot, in j^peaking of the etymology of the word devil, '^ Dia is Duo 
and Bohis is Morcellus ; whereby they gather, that the devil eateth up a man, 
body and soul, at two morsels." — A Discourse concerning Devils and Spirits, 
Book I., Chapter 32. 

t Discovery of Witchcraft, page 85. ["From him who had not lost all his 
original brightness, to this dirty fellow who leaves a stench, sometimes of brim- 
stone, behind him, the descent is a long one," says Lowell, in the learned 
paper on Witchcraft, in Among My Books. — Ed.] 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 1 79 

a strange Hieing to old women, quoted a passage, 
in which it had been said of him, that he " loved to 
walk in dry places." * Another wag, undertaking to 
show the people the devil himself, "" to the satisfac- 
tion," as Swift terms it, " of the beholders," held out to 
them an empty purse I A solider account of him has 
never been given. An Italian poet makes mention 
of a devil who dwelt in the smoke of roast meat, f 



* "That the prince of the powers of darkness, passing by the flower and pomp of 
the earth, should lay preposterous siege to the weak fantasy of indigent eld — has 
neither likelihood nor unlikelihood, a priori to us, who have no measure to guess 
at his policy, or standard to estimate what rate those anile souls may fetch in the 
devil's market." — Charles Lai7ib. — Ed. 

t Berni, Orlando Innamorato, Canto 51, st. 49. For a thorough knowledge of 
devils and all that has been said of them, the curious reader may consult Glan- 
ville on Witches, Wierus, De PrcBstigiis Dcetnottum, Steheiia's Rabbinical Liter- 
ature, the Lives of the Saints, and above all, Reginald Scot's Discovery of Witch- 
craft, the title of which ought to be given at large to do honor to the writer who 
could produce such a work at a period so early : for it was printed in 1584. But 
the sapient Scotch monarch had not then come to England to encourage people to 
be as sottish and half-witted as liimself Scot's book is entitled "The Dis- 
covery of Witchcraft, — proving that the compacts and contracts of witches with 
devils and all infernal spirits or familiars are but erroneous novelties and imagi- 
nary conceptions, &c. Wherein likewise the unchristian practices and inhumane 
dealings of searchers and witch- tryers, upon aged, melancholy, and superstitious 
people, in extorting confessions by terrors and tortures, and in devising false 
marks and symptoms, are notably detected ; and the knavery of jugglers, con- 
jurers, charmers, soothsayers, figure-casters, &c., fully opened and decyphered ; 
all which are very necessary to be known for the undeceiving of judges, justices, 
and jurors, before they pass sentence upon poor miserable and ignorant people : 
who are frequently consigned, condemned, and executed for witches and wizards. " 
It was avowedly to confute these " damnable opinions, " as he calls them, that 
King James wrote his DejnoKologie. Reginald Scot was a learned and spirited 
English gentleman, one of the most worthy of that title that ever existed, and 
ought to be held in eternal honor by those who feel interested in the cause of 
humanity. Think of a king putting forth the strength of his authority amidst bow- 
ing courtiers and churchmen, in order to retain a superstition by which it has been 
calculated that twenty thousand people were burnt in the course of one hundred 
and fifty years ; and then figure to yourself this gallant English gentleman (whose 
book it is said was burnt by the hangman) disdaining in secret these attempts of 



l8o THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

Before the devil's existence was denied, people be- 
gan to perceive that considerable doubts might be 
entertained as to the extent of his operations, and 
how far King James and others had a right to palm 
upon him the offences of their ^' corrupted flesh." * 
We speak in courts of law of criminals being " moved 
and instigated by the devil ; " but nobody but a Meth- 
odist doubts nowadays that the real instigators are 
folly and bad education, or poverty, or disease. The 
sight of injustice is also a great instigation. Whit- 
field, in his Life, attributes his aberrations from virtue 
to the devil ; who watched for him, he said, and "• took 
his usual advantage : " — upon which Bishop Laving- 
ton observes, that the man was only excusing himself 
at the devil's expense, and that Satan had reason to 
complain, and to look upon liimself as an ill used 
gentleman. To be serious ; — why should we set up 



the royal driveller, and looking forward to a time when his book would be quoted 
in favor of common sense and feeling, and with the gratitude of posterity. We 
should take care to bear the names of such men in golden preservation ; for it is 
sometimes the lot of the most precious labors to become obsolete and unremem- 
bered by reason of the very good they have done us. We are too apt to fancy, that 
what is a commonplace to us, was the same to our benefactors. 

* Demonologie, Book TIL, Chapter 2. The King says, that those who deny the 
power of a devil, would likewise deny the power of God, if they could for shame ; 
that is to say, those who deny the existence of the worst contradiction to good, 
must deny the power of the good itself; for such is really his argument. '' Since 
a divel, " he says, "is the very contrarie opposite to God, there can be no better 
way to know God, than by the contrarie, as by the one's power (though a creature) 
to admire the power of the great Creator, by the falsehood of the one to consider 
the truth of the other ; by the injustice of one to consider the justice of the other : 
and by the cruelty of the one, to consider the mercifulness of the other: and so 
forth in all the rest of the essence of God, and qualities of the Divell." — Id., 
Book II., Chapter 7. What a contempt must Scot have felt for such logic as 
this ! There is one point founded upon it that might have been granted to the 
king; viz., that by reading his book you may know by contraries v. hat a book 
ought to be. 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. l8l 

an imaginary malignant being to warn our mistakes 
and our anger with ; to learn how to hate and perse- 
cute in behalf of the very doctrines that protest against 
hatred and persecution ; and to endanger a confusion 
in all our notions of justice, benevolence, and com- 
mon sense? Sterne, in his Tristram Shandy, has 
copied a form of excommunication once in use against 
thieves and malefactors, and by which their eyes, 
limbs, and every particle of them, body and soul, were 
damned forever and ever in the name of all that was 
held sacred and good.* Dr. Slop was employed to 
read it out loud ; Uncle Toby whistled lillibullero all 
the while in ecstasy of astonishment ; observing at one 



* A translation is to be found in Scot, who proceeds to make the following re- 
mark : "This terrible curse with Bell. Book, and Candle, added thereunto, 
must need work wonders : howbeit, among thieves it is not much weighed, among 
wise and true men it is not well Hked, to them that are robbed it bringeih small 
relief: the priest's stomich miy well be eased, but the goods stolen will never 
the sooner be restored. Hereby is bewrayed both the malice and folly of Popish 
Doctrine, whose uncharitable impiety is so impudently published, and in such 
order uttered, as every sentence (if opportunity served) might be proved both 
heretical and diabolical. But I will answer this cruel answer with another cure 
far more mild and civil, performed by as honest a man as he that made the 
other, whereof mention was lately made. 

"So it was that a certain Sir John, with some of his company, once went 
abroad a jetting, and in a moonlight evening robbed a miller's weir, and stole all 
his eels. The poor miller made his moan to Sir John himself, who willed him to 
be quiet : for he would so curse the ihief and all his confederates, with Bell, Book, 
and Candle, that they should have small joy of their fish. And therefore the 
next Sunday Sir John got him into the pulpit, with surplice on his back and his 
stole about his neck, and pronounced these following in the audience of the 
people : — 

" All you that stole the miller's Eelfes, 
Laiidatc Domiman de Coeiis ; 
And all they that consented thereto, 
Beuedicamus Domino. 

" Lo, (saith he) there is sauce for your eeles, my master." 



iSz THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

passage, " our armies swore terribly in Flanders, but 
nothing to this : — for my own part I could not bear 
to treat and curse my dogs so ! " Dr. Slop continues : 
" May St. John the Precursor, and St. John the Bap- 
tist, and St. Peter, and St. Paul, and St. Andrew, and 
all other Christ's Apostles, curse him. May the holy 
and worshipful company of martyrs and confessors, 
who by their holy works are found pleasing to God 
Almighty, curse him. May the holy choir of the 
Holy Virgin damn him. May all the saints who 
from the beginning of the world and everlasting ages 
are found to be beloved of God, damn him. May he 
be damned wherever he be, whether in the house or 
stables, the garden or the field, or the highway, or 
in the path, or in the wood, or in the water, or in the 
church. May he be cursed in living, in dying. 
May he be cursed in all the faculties of his body. May 
he be cursed inwardly and outwardly. May he be 
cursed in the hair of his head. May he be cursed in 
his brains, and in his vertex." (That is a sad curse, 
quoth my father.) " In his temples and in his fore- 
head, — in his ears, in his eyebrows, in his eyes, in 
his cheeks, in his jaw-bones, in his nostrils, in his 
arms, in his hands, in his fingers. 

'' May he be damned in his mouth, in his breast, in 
his heart and purtenance ! down to the very stomach. 

" May he be cursed in all the joints and articula- 
tions of his members, from the top of his head to the 
sole of his foot. May there be no soundness in him. 

" May the Son of the living God, with all the glory 
of his majesty " — (here my Uncle Toby, throwing 
back his head, gave a monstrous long, loud whew — 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. I S3 

iv — w, something betwixt the inteijectional whistle 
of hey-day ! and the word itself) — '• curse him," con- 
tinued Dr. Slop, " and may Heaven, with all the pow- 
ers which move therein, rise up against him, curse 
and damn him, unless he repent, and make satisfac- 
tion. Amen. So be it, — so be it. Amen." 

" I declare," quoth my Uncle Toby, " my heart 
would not let me curse the devil himself with so much 
bitterness." " He is the father of curses," replied 
Dr. Slop. " So am not I," replied my uncle. " But 
he is cursed, and damned already, to all eternity," re- 
plied Dr. Slop. 

" I am SORRY FOR IT," quoth my Uncle Toby. 

" Dr. Slop drew up his mouth, and was just begin- 
ning to return my Uncle Toby the compliment of his 
ivhu — w — w, or interjectional whistle, when the 
door hastily opening in the next chapter but one — 
put an end to the affair." — Tristram Shandy, Book 
III., Chap. xi. 

But the affair was not put an end to. It has flour- 
ished, and brought forth good fruit. When people 
were led to consider that Jews had organs and dimen- 
sions like themselves, they first began not to loathe 
them, then they pitied them, and at last they did 
them justice. A similar process of reflection took 
place in behalf of birds and beasts : it was discovered 
that horses and dogs liad limbs to be hurt, as well as 
ourselves ; and it is now doubted by some whether 
we ought to shut in a cage a winged animal, whose 
region is the air. (By and by we shall begin to have 
commiseration for fish, and anglers will cease to think 
themselves the humanest of men.) At length the 



THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 



devil himself was done justice to ; and noble-hearted 
Burns finally wished him out of his coal-hole. So 



830. 



' Fare you well, auld Nickie-ben ! 
O wad ye tak a thought and men' 1 
Ye aiblins might — I dinna ken — 

Still hae a "Stake — 
I'm wae to think upo' yon den, 
Even for your sake ! " 



A FEW WORDS ON ANGELS. 

AS we have said so much about Devils, we 
thought we could not complete these super- 
natural discussions better, nor leave off with a pleas- 
anter " taste in the mouth," than by adding what we 
know of Angels. We hope it will prove like a 
dessert after the "' hot dishes." 

Angel comes from the Greek word Aggelos (pro- 
nounced Angelos), and signifies a messenger. Mer- 
cury in Hesiod is called the Angel of Jupiter. Any 
messenger, literally speaking, is an angel. A ticket- 
porter might write on his card, '' Thomas Jones, 
Angel." A beautiful woman, coming to us with 
an errand of peace or jo)^, is literally, as well as 
metaphorically, an angel. But in modern language 
(and herein we desi-«-e to speak with a seriousness be- 
coming the idea of " the sweet and loving angels," 
as Luther calls them *) the word signifies one of the 
multitudes of those winged spirits, who, according 
to the Jews and Christians, enjoy the beatitude of the 

* Table-Talk. 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 1 85 

divine presence, are eternally glorifying it with hymns 
and harpings, and are occasionally despatched to us 
on messages or with aid. Luther is of opinion, that 
while occupied in heaven, they are, nevertheless, 
fighting for us on earth ; " for," says he, in his home- 
ly way, and with that vein of familiarity in his re- 
spect, which does not diminish the real reverence of 
enthusiasm, '^ the angels have long arms." * But it 
has been the general opinion of the churches, that 
every man has a guardian angel assigned him, 
who helps him in his ways, encourages his virtues, 
and supplies proper trouble on occasion to turn 
him from his vice. This is the Good Demon of the 
Platonists ; nor is it possible to make inquiry into the 
nature of the one spirit without hearing of the other. 
Nothing is here meant to be insinuated against the 
existence of myriads of heavenly creatures. We have 



* " And is there care in heaven ? And is there love 
In heavenly spirits to these creatures base, 
That may compassion of their evils move? 
There is : — else much more wretched were the cace 
Of men then beasts : But O ! th' exceeding grace 
Of Highest God that loves his creatures so, 
And all his workes with mercy doth embrace, 
That blessed Angels he sends to and fro, 
To serve to wicked man, to serve his wicked foe I 

" How oft do they their silver bowers leave 

To come to succour us that succour want ! 

How oft do they with golden pineons cleave 

The flitting skyes, like flying pursuivant, 

Against fowle feendes to ayd us militant ! 

They for us fight, they watch and devvly ward, 

And their bright squadrons round about us plant : 

And all for love and nothing for reward: 
O, why should Heavenly God to men have such regard ? " 

So Spenser beautifully sings in The Faerie Queene, Book II., Canto viii. — Ed. 



1 86 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

the same hope of their existence as we have of 
thousands of other things, good and lovely, and the 
same tendency to disbelieve in their useless oppo- 
nents. But the most orthodox believers may, accord- 
ing to the divines, be too anxious and too peremptory 
on these points ; and therefore we shall not follow 
them in their flights with St. Dionysius, who pretended 
to draw up a peerage of the angelic noblesse. We 
shall not venture to say with the great poet (who, after 
all, made a bad business of it), — 

" Into the heaven of heaven I have presumed 
An earthly guest ; " 

neither shall we discuss with the churchmen whether 
angels have or have not bodies ; whether they are 
always exercising their understandings ; how long it 
would take them to come down from the eighth heav- 
en, reckoning at the rate of a thousand miles an 
hour ; or how many of them could dance on the point 
of a needle without jostling. A Jesuit, of the name 
of La Cerda, informs us that a single angel whirls the 
heavens, and all the orbs about with it, at the rate of 
26,000 German miles an hour.* We cannot take his 
word for it ; and, indeed, the greater and more angel- 
ical the hopes of mankind become, the less will they 
take people's words for anything, a dogma by its 
essence containing the principles of falsehood, which 
is the reason why so many fine ones come to nothing, 
aiid endanger the virtues they pretend to support. f 

* De Excellejitia. Spirituum Ccelestmm, Cap. 2. 

t The learned reader need not be informed that the word angel, like a great 
many other words in Scripture, is capable ox having other interpretations put 
upon ii than that of a winged messenger from above. See a work entitled the 
Oriental Missionary. 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 187 

Yet, on reflection, we give a list of the alleged 
hierarchy of angels, and of some of their names. 
The poets, having made use of them, have rendered 
them a warrantable part of fiction ; and there is a 
music in the sound. Milton, in the addresses of Sa- 
tan, does not observe the due order of the hierarchy, 
which stands as follows : — 

The Seraphim . . . who excel in love. 

Cherubim knowledge. 

Thrones superiority to sin, and in influence 

upon those below them. 

Dominations freedom of service and the regula- 
tion of the divine glory. 

Virtues execution of the divine will. 

Powers subjection of evil spirits. 

PRiNCiPALiTiEsarethe . . . chief governors of the divine mes- 
sengers. 

Archangels chief messengers. 

Angels messengers. 

These are the " trinal triplicities " of which Spenser 
talks ; the whole hierarchy consisting of three classes, 
and every class of three sections. Upon the subject 
of their employment round the " throne " of the di- 
vine being, we would rather not dwell ; our respect 
for the mystery of the Deity being too great, and not 
choosing to degrade it even to the heights of poet'y. 
We may remark, however, that the placing Seraphim 
before Cherubim, — or love before knowledge, — can 
hardly be thought unworthy of anything divine, and 
is a fine moral. The distinction of offices and facul- 
ties in these lists of angels is, it must be confessed, 
not always very distinct. It is not so in the one be- 



l88 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

fore us ; and they differ in various authors.* Of the 
names of angels, the following comprise the most 
received and the most musical. There are four cele- 
brated archangels : — 

Michael, who is said to preside over the East Wind, and the 
Nations in that quarter. 

Raphael the West. 

Gabriel the North. 

Uriel • the South. 

Whether by accident or system, this assignment of 
quarters is very suitable to the characters given to the 
respective archangels, Michael being the fierce and 
more dictatorial virtue, Raphael " the affable arch- 
angel," and Uriel the angel of the sun. It has been 
observed, on a similar ground, that the names of the 
two princes of painting, Raphael and Michael An- 
gelo (the most visible angels ever possessed by the 
Romish Church, and very lucky ones for her) were 
singularly expressive of their different qualities, as 
well as of the rank they held in their paradise. Co- 
relli's name of Arcangelo was a like felicity ; no 



* See Heywood's Hierarchic of Angels ; a Treatise of Angels, by John 
Salkeld, London, 1613 ; a Theological Discourse of Angels and their Ministries, 
by Benjamin Camfield, &c. ; and for matters relative to angels in general, consult 
also La Cerda, before mentioned, and a work entitled Rabbinical Literature, by 
the Rev. J. P. Stehelin, in two vols., 8vo., 1748. La Cerda contains a number 
of celestial anecdotes ; and Mr. Stehelin's work is a curious compilation of 
things fantastic, but, upon the whole, showing a kindliness of imagination which 
Christians would hardly expect from Jews, and which they would be more Chris- 
tian in some points if they would imitate. The Jews, for instance, like our sect 
of Universalists, believe that the devils themselves may be saved. There is 
one very grand notion in this book. The Jews believe that there are three voices 
constantly going through the world, unheard of inortal ears : the Voice of the 
globe of the stm, the Voice of the sotd departing from the body, and the Voice 
0/ the imirvniriiig of Rome. This is the most magnificent idea of the Roman 
capital ever conceived. 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 189 

musician, except Handel, touching forth a more an- 
geHcal note than he did, with his air-drawn bow. 
Handel, in addition to this, fairly sets the angels float- 
ing, with his wafting symphonies ; and, when he con- 
cludes, you lose their feet in heaven. Let the reader 
allow me to mention in this place, as no unsuitable 
one, the divine air of " Waft her, angels," and the 
still diviner one, " There were shepherds abiding 
in the fields," with its Raphaelesque recitative. 
Nothing can be simpler, more touching, more sin- 
cere. You are conscious of the innocent shepherds 
keeping their flocks in the cool night. Their very 
looks are painted in the artless notes, and the angels 
speak to them in a few others, equally simple and 
beautiful. 

Other names of angels : — 



Hamabiel. 


Maion. 


Ophaniel. 


Ambriel. 


Malthidiel. 


Arcan. 


Zamiel. 


Jeremlel. 


Zuriel, and 


Varchiel. 
Jurabatres. 


Ariel. 


Muriel. 



*' El " is a termination, denoting God. Thus, Uriel 
signifies the Light of God ; Raphael, the Medicine of 
God, — the Celestial Healer. These and other angels 
were supposed to preside over the zodiac, the planets, 
the elements, &c., and indeed over everything that 
could be presided over, down to a weed in the grass. 
The Rabbis were of opinion that they made them- 
selves bodies to appear in, out of the snow under the 
Throne of Glory ; and that if they were absent from 
heaven seven days in succession they were unable to 
return. 



190 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

It is not our intention to speak of the Fallen Angels 
or of their '^ Loves." It is much easier to conceive a 
loving than a fallen angel ; but our present object is 
to describe the happy winged spirit, as he appears to 
the eye of innocence and imagination. Infants, when 
they smile without an apparent cause, are supposed 
to see angels.* It is these whose faces we would 
behold. 

Our guesses as to the nature of any being may be 
unlimited ; but we can paint images of him only from 
what we know, and hence we draw happy spirits in 
the happiest human shape. 

•'To whom the angel with a smile that glowed 
• Celestial rosy red, love's proper hue." — Milton. 

"Her angel face 
As the great eye of heaven shined bright, 
And made a sunshine in the shady place." — Spenser. 

"Ocelli aveaneri, e chioma crespa d'oro, 
Angel parea di quel del sommo coro." — Ariosto. 

" Black eyes he had, and sunny curls of hair ; 
He seem'd an angel, newly from the air." 

Ariosto's heroine, who is a personification of Beau- 
ty, is named Angelica. So we call a beautiful boy a 
cherub ; and though sophisticate ladies may find 
fault with being called angels, and not think it very 
sincere, it is still one of the best and most natural 
appellations which the rapture of love can bestow 
on beauty and goodness. 



* "Some," says delightful old Thomas Fuller, "admiring what motives to 
mirth infants meet with in their silent and solitary smiles, have resolved (how 
truly I know not) that then they converse with angels, as indeed such cannot 
amongst mortals find any fitter companions. " — Epistle Dedicatory to A Pisgah- 
Sight of Palestine. — En. 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. I9I 

Our friend the Jesuit, above quoted, makes mention 
indeed of old angels. He describes one, who ap- 
peared to the mother of St. Eucherius, and who 
told her that she was about to be brought to bed of 
an archbishop.* This venerable anticipation looks 
as much like an old angel as anything well can ; but 
still we cannot fancy an elderly seraph, or a cherub 
of two-and-sixty. Jesuits are famous for having odd 
notions of things divine. They are celebrated in par- 
ticular for not understanding the exact limits of what 
may be feigned and what not: and accordingly, in 
our friend's book w^e have a story of an angel, who 
imposed himself upon a farmer for one of his plough- 
men, in order that the latter might cultivate his love 
of the truth at chapel.f Yet in the same book we 
have an account of another pious person, who, being 
extremely addicted to angels (" addictissimus an- 
gells"')^ would never tell a lie, not even to save his 
life ; that is to say, would not do what the angels 
w^ould. The bestx^story in La Cerda is one which 
Massinger made the ground of his Virgin Martyr. 
An extract or two from the tragedy we keep for the 
conclusion of this article, as the best part of it, and 
as boys keep the sunny side of their apple for the last 
relish. The angel proper, as the heralds would call 
him, is neither old nor false, but young, beautiful, 
ingenuous, rosy bright, with wings, and a white vest. 
La Cerda gives us to understand (and here he is inno- 
cent enough) that he is " sometimes clothed in blue, 
rarely in purple." Some of the poets have made 

* Ln Cerda, Cap. 43. + La Cerda, Cap. 2. 



192 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

his wings to be put on and off at pleasure, and many 
have painted them as of gorgeous color. 

" Of silver wings he took a shining pair, 
Fringed with gold, unwearied, nimble, swift." — Fairfax's Tasso. 

Cowley, in the Davideis, is still more particular to 
this point, but the passage is in his worst style, and 
therefore must not be quoted. It is doubtful whether 
the word wore in the following passage of Milton 
does not imply the same thing. Speaking of Ra- 
phael, when he came down on his message to Adam, 
he says, — 

" Six wings he •wore, to shade 
His lineaments divine : the pair that clad 
Each shoulder broad, came mantling o'er his breast 
With regal ornament ; the middle pair 
Girt, like a starry zone, his waist ; and round. 
Skirted his loins and thighs with downy gold. 
And colours dipt in heaven : the third his feet 
Shadowed from either heel with feather'd mail, 
Sky-tinctur'd grain. Like Maia's son he stood. 
And shook his plumes, that heavenly fragrance filled 
The circuit wide." —Par. Lost, Book V. 

Which last image is taken from a beautiful couplet of 
Fairfax, never to be too often repeated : — 

" On Lebanon at first his foot he set, 
And shook his wings with rosy may-dews wet." 

Again, in the passage where Milton describes Satan 
in the likeness of a cherub : — 

" And now a stripling cherub he appears 
Not of the prime, yet such as in his face 
Youth smiled celestial, and to every limb 
Suitable grace diffused, so well he feigned. 
Under a coronet, his flowing hair 
In curls on either cheek play'd ; wings he wore 
Of many a coloured plume, sprinkled with gold ; 
His habit fit for speed succinct, and held 
Before his decent steps a silver wand." 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. I93 

This description has been much admired ; and indeed 
Milton cannot dilate into any description in which 
something admirable is not to be found. In gor- 
geousness of color his angels are not to be surpassed ; 
yet we cannot help thinking that there is something 
too princely, and conscious, and full-dressed : not 
native enough to the sweetness and simplicity of 
heaven. They do not announce themselves so much 
by the delightfulness of their presence as the dazzling 
of it, which is surely the inferior thing. It is doubt- 
ful whether Raphael has not too much bird-coating; 
and there is something in the " silver wand " which 
the youthful Cherub bears before him, which, to our 
minds, is positively poor and in the way. Milton 
seems to have had a regard for a stick. He has given 
one to Satan to support his uneasy steps over the 
burning soil of Hell ; and here he gives him another 
in heaven to look becoming with. Princes in those 
times walked with a stick, — perhaps the poet him- 
self did ; and he has, unquestionably shown more 
regard for the kingly character in heaven than he did 
on earth. His angelic notions are full of " regal 
ornament," of " coronets," and kingly state. 

" He, kingly, from his state 
Inclined not" 

says he, speaking of Michael. But they have worse 
moral failures than these. To say nothing of the 
contradictions into which his story compelled him ; 
and to sum up in one specimen all the faults to which 
polemics had rendered his divinity liable, what are 
we to think of his making his angels guilty of posi- 
tive," gratuitous malignity.^ Satan, travelling towards 



194 ^^^ WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

earth, comes to a sea of jasper, on which is a stair- 
case wliich descended from heaven. 

" The stairs were then let down, whether to dare 
The fiend by easy ascent, or aggravate 
His sad exclusiottfrojn the doors of bliss." 

Book III., V. 553- 

This is a piece of malignity more worthy of hell than 
heaven; if, indeed, hell could be imagined capable 
of at once being in a state of bliss and desirous of 
giving sorrow. In fact, this is the most infernal pas- 
sage in Paradise Lost. Luckily, it is mere talking: 
no being could be guilty of a mockery so inhuman ; for 
there is, in reality, no such thing as malignity for its 
own sake. The most wilful inflictors of suffering are 
themselves in a state of suffering, which they think to 
alleviate by thrusting a part of it on others ; and an- 
gels, having no suffering at all, would be the only 
true devils, if they would act as the poet's slip of the 
pen has here made them. 

There is a pretty passage of an angel in Spenser ; 
and there the heavenly creature is at his proper work : 
he is doing good. The poet has given him pied 
wings like a jay, which is perhaps not so well. They 
would better have suited a Cupid. But the picture 
is in his happiest manner. It is attended with those 
circumstances of verisimilitude which make the most 
supernatural things appear natural. On turning to 
the passage, I find that Spenser has compared his 
angel to Cupid, and this too in a stanza which is the 
more displaced by reason of the very perfection of its 
paganism. It is as if Poussin had lumped together 
a Scripture piece and a Bacchanal. A pilgrim finds 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 195 

Guyon sleeping in " a shady delve," and somebody 
sitting by him. 

' ' Beside his head there satt a faire young man, 
Of wondrous beauty and of freshest yeares, 
Whose tender bud to blossome new began, 
And flourish faire, above his equall peares ; 
His snowy front, curled with golden heares, , 

Like Phoebus' face adorned with sunny rayes, 
Divinely shone ; and two sharpe winged sheares, 
Decked with divers plumes like painted jayes, 

Were fixed at his back, to cut his ayery wayes." 

Faerie Queen, Book II., Canto 8. 

There are the wings of Titian's Cupid, in the picture 
where his mother is blinding him. Perhaps it was a 
consciousness to that effect which led the poet into 
his comparison. We omit the latter as unsuitable ; 
but we must not omit what follows. The sti^anger 
delivers up his charge to the pilgrim ; and then,- says 
the poet, — 

" Eftsoones he gan display 
His painted nimble wings, and vanisht quite away. 
The palmer seeing his left empty place, 
And his slow eies beguiled of their sight, 
Waxe sore affraid, and standing still a space 
Gaz'd after him, as fowle escapt by flight." 

Where the "blessed bird" goes to (as Dante calls 
him), we do not presume to say; nor what he does 
when he has ended his journey. 

" What know we of the blest above 
But that they sing, and that they love ?" 

says Waller. To say we know it, is to say a little 
too much ; but to imagine it is reasonable enough, 
considering that singing and loving (provided they 
be genuine of their sort) are two of the highest pleas- 
ures on earth, and may be fancied to touch upon 



196 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

heaven. Milton has said some fine things about the 
loves of angels, to which we content ourselves with 
referring: the reader. Taken out of their context, and 
of that " celestial colloquy sublime," we might do 
them an injustice- The angel, in this article of ours, 
may be said to become our property, as soon as we 
can descry him with earthly eyes, and no sooner ; or 
we may fancy we hear before we see him. 

" And now 'tis like all instruments, 
Now like a lonely flute ; 
And now it is angel's song, 

That bids the heavens be mute." 

Coleridge's A ncieni Mariner. 

We must humanize everything before we can love it. 
To fancy an angel rising in the east like a star, is 
making him too potent and gigantic. He must come 
near to us, and in our own shape ; must be guarding 
innocence or consoling adversity, or suggesting wis- 
dom and sweeter thoughts to those w4io fancy them- 
selves wicked, or conversing with the glad eyes and 
inarticulate raptures of infancy ; for infants, when 
smiling and babbling to themselves, are supposed to 
be talking with angels. Even those beautiful gorgeous 
wings, in which he is invested by the poets, hardly 
seem to be an apparel in which he is to stay with us. 
They are for a sudden vision, a stoop out of the lus- 
tre of heaven. It is remarkable that the painters 
have never given colored wings to their angels. The 
temptation would seem to be great, — the palette looks 
like a wing ready made, — and yet they have not 
given way to it. No : t/ie angel is the angel of one's 
infancy, the blooming white-vested boy with the spot- 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. I97 

less wings ; and thus is he painted by the Guides and 
Correggios. 

We think we see him now, looking out of one of 
their divine pictures, young, blooming, innocent, nat- 
ural as unconscious perfection, beautiful as truth. He 
is a boy on a noble scale, but still human ; and his 
large curls are tawny with the noons of Paradise. 

An angel is the chorister of heaven, the page of 
martyrdom, the messenger from the home of moth- 
ers. He comes to the tears of the patient, and is in 
the blush of a noble anger. He kisses the hand that 
gives an alms. He talks to parents of their departed 
children, and smooths the pillow of sickness, and 
supports the cheek of the prisoner against the wall, 
and is the knowledge and comfort which a heart has 
of itself when nobody else knows it, and is the play- 
fellow of hope, and the lark of aspiration, and the 
lily in the dusk of adversity. All this we believe 
him, even should we hold his appearance to be a 
fable, and though we deny the letter of a thousand 
things out of which we would extricate the spirit ; 
for wherever there is goodness and imagination, there 
of necessity are thoughts angelical, winged indestruc- 
tible hopes. The dryest line of the geometer, if he 
knew all, were a wand of as much wonder as Pros- 
pero's ; or if it were not so, Prospero's itself were 
none, and our most exalted aspirations would still be 
as warrantable as the earth we touch. If anything 
unwise could be unpardonable, the only fault not to 
be forgiven were dogmatism ; and yet where could 
an angelical thought exist, and forgiveness not be 
discovered? 



198 



THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 



We conclude with the lovely scene out of Massui- 
ger. Drayton gives us to understand that angels 
converse in poetry. We know not how that may be ; 
but if ever a blooming, angelical boy was visible in a 
book, and talked on paper, it is here. 

JVngelo, an Angel, attends Dorothea as a Page. Angelo, Dorothea. 
The time midnight. 

Dor. My book and taper. 

Ang. Here, most holy mistress. 

Dor. Thy voice sends forth such music, that I never 

Was ravish'd with a more celestial sound. 

Were every servant in the world like thee, 

So full of goodness, angels would come down 

To dwell with us : thy name is Angelo, 

And like that name thou art. Get thee to rest : 

Thy youth with too much watching is opprest. 
A ng. No, my dear lady. I could weary stars. 

And force the wakeful moon to loose her eyes, 

By my late watching but to wait on you. 

When at your pray'rs you kneel before the altar, 

Methinks I'm singing with some quire in heaven, 

So blest I hold me in your company. 

Therefore, my most loved mistress, do not bid 

Your boy, so serviceable, to get hence ; 

For then you break his heart. 
Dor. Be nigh me still, then. 

In golden letters down I'll set that day. 

Which gave thee to me. Little did I hope 

To meet such worlds of comfort in thyself, 

This little, pretty body, when I, coming ^ 

Forth of the Temple, heard my beggar-boy, 

My sweet-fac'd godly beggar-boy, crave an alms, 

Which with glad hand I gave, with lucky hand ; 

And when I took thee home, my most chaste bosom 

Methought was filled with no hot wanton fire, 

But with a holy flame, mounting since higher. 

On wings of cherubims, than it did before. 
A ng. Proud am I that my lady's modest eye 

So likes so poor a servant. 
Dor. I have offer' d 

Handfuls of gold but to behold thy parents. 

I would leave kingdoms, were I queen of some, 

To dwell with thy good father ; for the son 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 1 99 

Bewitching; me so deeply with his presence, 
He that begot him must do't ten times more. 
I pray thee, my sweet boy, show me thy parents ; 
Be not ashamed. 

Ani;: I am not : I did never 

Know who my mother was ; but by yon palace, 

Filled with bright heav'nly courtiers, I dare assure you. 

And pawn these eyes upon it, and this hand. 

My father is in heav'n ; and, pretty mistress, 

If your illustrious hour-glass spend his sand 

No worse than yet it doth, upon my life, 

You and I both shall meet my father there, 

And he shall bid you welcome. 

Dor. A bless' d day ! * 

We had a great mind to conclude v^ith this scene, 
but there is another in the same ph^y which presents 
us with so beautiful a picture of the angel, — some- 
what between the gorgeousness of the poets in gen- 
eral and the simplicity of the painters, — that we 
cannot resist copying it. Theophilus, the persecutor, 
who has been the cause of the martyrdom of Doro- 
thea, and who is converted and becomes a martyr 
himself, is soliloquizing upon the torture he will wreak 
upon those who differ with him, when Angelo comes 
in with a basket of fruit and flowers. The Roman 
does not see him at first, and so continues talking. 



* "This scene," says an excellent critic, "has beauties of so high an order, 
that with all my respect for Massinger, I did not think he had poetical enthusiasm 
capable of furnishing them. His associate. Decker, who wrote Old Fortunatus, 
had poetry enough for anything. The very impurities which obtrude themselves 
among the sweet pieties of this play (like Satan among the sons of heaven), and 
which the brief scope of my plan fortunately enables me to leave out, have a 
strength of contrast, a raciness and a glow in them, which are above Massinger. 
They set off the religion of the rest, somehow, as Caliban serves to show Mi- 
randa." — Specitnetis of English Dramatic Poets, by Charles Lamb. 

Thus it is that fine natures know how to turn fugitive or imaginary evil to 
account, instead of thinking themselves called upon to show that they cannot 
think too much evil about it ; as some critics have done, whom It were a poiW 
thing to name in so sweet a place. 



200 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

Theoph. This Christian slut was well, 

A pretty one : but let such horror follow 
The next I feed with torments, that when Rome 
Shall hear it, her foundation at the cound 
May feel an earthquake. How now I [Music. 

Afio^. Are you amazed, sir ? 

So great a Roman spirit, and doth it tremble ? 

Theoph. How cam'st thou in ? To whom 
Thy business ? 
A ng: To you : 

I had a^jnistress, late sent hence by you 

Upon a bloody errand ; you entreated, 

That when she came in to that blessed garden 

Whither she knew she went, and where now happy, 

She feeds upon all joy, she would send to you 

Some of that garden fruit, and flowers ; which here, 

To have her promise saved, are brought by me. 

Theoph. Cannot I see this garden ? 
A ng. Yes, if the master 

Will give you entrance. \He va-rtisheth. 

Theoph. 'Tis a tempting fruit — 

And the most bright-cheeked child I ever viewed, — 
Sweet smelling, goodly fruit. What flowers are these ? 
In Dioclesian's gardens the most beauteous, 
Compared with ihese, are weeds : is it not February, 
The second day she died? frost, ice, and snow, 
Hang on the beard of winter : where's the sun 
That gilds the summer? Pretty, sweet boy, say, 
In what country shall a man find this garden ? 
My delicate boy, — gone! vanished! Within there, 
Julianus ! Geta ! 

Enter Julianus and Geta. 

Both. My lord. 
Theoph. Are my gates shut ? 

Geta. And guarded. 
Theoph. Saw you not a boy ? 

Jul. Where? 
Theoph. Here he entered; a young lad ; 

A thousand blessings danced upon his eyes, 
A smooth-faced, glorious thing, that brought this basket. 
Geta. No, sir ? 
Theoph. Away — but be in reach, if my voice calls you. 

{Exeunt. 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 20I 

We need not point out to our readers the " bright- 
cheeked child," the " smooth-faced glorious thing," 
that brings a basket, — a thousand blessings dancing 
upon his eyes; — but we notice the words that we 
may enjoy them in their company. — And so with this 
perfect taste of the angel and his Eden fruit, we con- 
clude. 1830. 



CHILD-BED. 

A PROSE POEM. 

AND is child-bed among the graces, with its 
close room, and its unwilling or idle visitors, 
and its jesting nurse (the old and indecent stranger), 
and its unmotherly, and unwifely, and unlovely lam- 
entations? Is pain so unpleasant that love cannot 
reconcile it; andean pleasures be repeated without 
shame, which are regretted with hostile cries and re- 
sentment ! 

No. But child-bed is among the graces, with tlic 
handsome quiet of its preparation, and the smooth 
pillow sustaining emotion, and the soft steps of love 
and respect, and the room in which the breath of the 
universe is gratefully permitted to enter, and mild 
and venerable aid, and the physician (the urbane se- 
curity), and the living treasure containing treasure 
about to live, who looks in the eyes of hiin that caused 
it and seeks energy in the grappling of his hand, and 
hides her face in the pillow that she may save him a 



202 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

pain by stifling a greater. There is a tear for what 
may have been done wrong, ever ; and for what may 
never be to be mutually pardoned again ; but it is 
gone, for what needs it? Angelical are their whis- 
pers apart ; and Pleasure meets Pain the seraph, and 
knows itself to be noble in the smiling testimony of 
his severity. 

It was on a May evening, in a cottage flowering 
with the green-gage, in the time of hyacinths and 
new hopes, when the hand that wrote this, took the 
hand that had nine times lain thin and delicate on 
the bed of a mother's endurance ; and he kissed it, 
like a bride's. 1827-1837. 



ROUSSEAU'S PYGMALION. 

WE are not aware that this piece of Rousseau's 
has hitherto appeared in English. It is a 
favorite in France, and very naturally so, on all ac- 
counts. To our countrymen there will perhaps ap- 
pear to be something, in parts of it, too declamatory 
and full of ejaculation ; and it must be confessed, 
that if the story alone is to be considered, the illus- 
trious author has committed one great fault, which 
was hardly to be expected of him ; and that is, that 
he has not made the sentiment sufficiently promi- 
nent. The original story, though spoiled by the rake 
Ovid, informs us, that Pygmalion, with all his warmth 
towards the sex, was so disgusted at the manners of 
his countrywomen, that instead of going any longer 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 303 

into their society, he preferred making images, in 
his own mind, and with his chisel, of what a wo- 
man ought to be; informing her looks, of course, 
with sentiment and kindness, as well as with the 
more ordinary attractions. It appears to us, there- 
fore, that instead of making him fall in love, almost 
out of vanity, as Rousseau has done, it might have 
been better, in the abstract point of view above men- 
tioned, to represent him fashioning the likeness of 
a creature after his own heart, lying and looking at 
it with a yearning wish that he could have met with 
such a living being, and at last, while indulging his 
imagination with talking to her, making him lay his 
hand upon hers, and finding it warm. The rest is, 
in every respect, exquisitely managed by Rousseau. 
But now we must observe, that while the charge of 

o 

a certain prevailing air of insincerity over the French 
style in these matters appears just in most instances, 
a greater confidence is to be put in the enthusiasm 
of the Genevese ; for he was a kind of Pygmalion 
himself, disgusted with the world, and perpetually, 
yet hopelessly, endeavoring to realize the dreams of 
his imagination. This, after all, is perhaps the most 
touching thing in his performance. Pygmalion's self 
predominates over the idea of his mistress, because 
the author's self pressed upon him while he wrote. 
The only actual difference between the fabulous soli- 
tary and the real one was, unfortunately, that Pyg- 
malion seems to have been willing enough to be 
contented, had he found a mistress that deserved 
him ; whereas Rousseau, when he was really beloved, 
and even thought himself so, was sure to be made 



204 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

the ruin of his own comfort ; partly by a distrustful 
morbidity of temperament, and partly, perhaps, by a 
fastidious metaphysical subtilty, which turned his eye 
with a painful sharpness upon the defects instead of 
humanities of his fellow-creatures, and made the in- 
dividual answer for the whole mass. 

The scene represents a sculptor's work-shop, in 
which are several blocks of marble, sculptured groups, 
and sketches of statues. In the midst of these is an- 
other statue, concealed under a drapery of a light and 
shining stuff, ornamented with fringes and garlands. 

Pygmalion is sitting, supporting his head with his 
hand, in the attitude of a man who is uneasy and 
melancholy. On a sudden he rises ; and taking one 
of his tools from a table, gives some strokes of the 
chisel to several of the sketches ; then turns from them, 
and looks about him with an air of discontent. 

Pygmalion. There is neither life nor soul in it ; it 
is but a mere stone. I shall never do anything with 
all this. 

O, my genius, where art thou.? What has become 
of thee? All my fire is extinguished, my imagina- 
tion is frozen ; the marble comes cold from my hands. 

Make no more gods, Pygmalion ; you are but a 
common artist — ye vile instruments, no longer in- 
struments of my glory, ye shall dishonor my hands no 
more. 

(He throws away his tools with disdain, and walks 
about with his arms crossed, as in meditation.) 

What am I become } What strange revolution has 
taken place in me.'^ — Tyre, proud and opulent city, 
your illustrious monuments of art no longer attract me. 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 205 

I have lost my taste for them. All intercourse with 
artists and philosophers has become insipid to me : 
the society of painters and poets has no attraction for 
me ; praise and renown have ceased to elevate me ; 
the approbation of posterity has no interest for me ; 
even friendship has to me lost all her charms. 

And you, yoiuig masterpieces of nature, whom my 
art has presumed to imitate, you, in whose train the 
pleasures ever led me, you, my charming models, 
who consumed me at once with the flame of love and 
genius, — since I have surpassed you, you are all be- 
come indifferent to me. 

(He seats himself, and contemplates the figures 
around him.) 

Detained in this room by an inconceivable charm, I 
know not what to do here, and yet I cannot leave it. 
I wander from group to group, from figure to figure, 
my weak and uncertain chisel no longer acknowledg- 
ing its master. These rude sketches are left un- 
touched by the hand which should have given them 
life and beauty — 

(He rises impetuously.) 

It is over, it is over: I have lost my genius! So 
young — and yet I have survived it ! 

And what, then, is this internal ardor which con- 
sumes me? What is this fire which devours me? 
Why, in the languor of extinguished genius, should I 
feel these emotions, these bursts of impetuous passion, 
this insurmountable restlessness, this secret agitation 
which torments me? I know not ; I fear the admi- 
ration of my own work has been the cause of this 
distraction.* I have concealed it under this veil — 



2o6 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

my profane hands have ventured to cover this mon- 
ument of their glory. Since I have ceased to behold 
it, I have become more raelanchoh^ and absent. How 
dear, how precious, this immortal work will be to 
me ! If my exhausted mind shall never more pro- 
duce anything grand, beautiful, worthy of me, I will 
point to my Galatea, and say, " There is my work." 
O my Galatea ! when I shall have lost all else, do 
thou alone remain to me, and I shall be consoled. 

(He approaches the veiled statue ; draws back ; 
goes, comes ; stops sometimes to look at it, and 
sighs.) 

But why conceal it? What do I gain by that? 
Reduced to idleness, why refuse myself the pleasure 
of contemplating the finest of my works? Perhaps 
there may yet be some defect which I have not per- 
ceived ; perhaps I might yet add some ornament to 
the drapery : no imaginable grace should be want- 
ing to so charming an object. Perhaps the contem- 
plation of this figure may re-animate my languish- 
ing imagination. I must see her again ; I must ex- 
amine my work. What do I say? Yes; I have 
never yet examined it ; hitherto I have only admired 
her. 

(He goes to raise the veil, and lets it fall, as if 
alarmed.) 

I know not what emotion seizes me when I touch 
this veil. 

I feel a tremor, as though I were touching the 
sanctuary of some divinity. — Pygmalion, it is but a 
stone; it is thine own work — what can it mean? 
In our temples, they serve gods made of the same 
material, and formed by the same hand as this. 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 20*J 

(He raises the veil trembling, and prostrates him- 
self before the statue of Galatea, which is seen placed 
on a pedestal, raised by semicircular steps of marble.) 

O Galatea ! receive my homage. I have deceived 
myself. I thought to make you a nymph, and I 
have made you a goddess. Even Venus herself is 
less beautiful. 

O vanity, human weakness ! I am never weary 
of admiring my own work ; I am intoxicated with 
self-love ; I adore myself in that which I have made. 

— No, never was there anything in nature so beau- 
tiful ; I have surpassed the work of the Gods. — 
What ! so many beauties formed by my hands ; my 
hands then have touched them ; my mouth has — I 
see a defect. This drapery too much conceals it. 
I must slope it away more ; the charms which it 
shades should be more displayed. 

(He takes his mallet and chisel, and advancing 
slowly, begins with much hesitation to ascend the 
steps towards tlie statue, which, it seems, he dares 
not touch. He raises the chisel, — he stops.) 

What is this trouble — this trembling? I hold 
the chisel with a feeble hand — I cannot — I dare not 

— I shall spoil everything. 

(He endeavors to conquer his trouble, and at last, 
raising the chisel again, makes one stroke, and lets 
it fall, with a loud cry.) 

Gods ! I feel the quivering flesh repel the chisel ! 

(He descends, trembhng and confused.) 

— Vain terror, blind folly ! — No — I will not touch 
her — the Gods aftright me. Doubtless she is al- 
ready deified. 



2o8 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

(He contemplates her again.) 

What would you change, Pygmalion ? Look ! what 
new charms can you give her ? Alas ! her only fault 
is her perfection. — Divine Galatea ! less perfect, noth- 
ing would be wanting to thee. 

(Tenderly.) 

Yet a soul is wanting. That figure should not be 
without a soul. 

(With still increasing tenderness.) 

How fine should be the soul to animate that body ! 

(He stops a long time; then returns to his seat, 
and speaks with a slow and changed voice.) 

What desires have I dared to form ! What sense- 
less wishes ! 

What is this I feel.? — O Heaven ! the illusion van- 
ishes, and I dare not look into my heart. I should 
have too much to reproach myself with. 

(He pauses a long time, in profound melancholy.) 

This, then, is the noble passion which distracts me ! 
It is on account of this inanimate figure that I dare 
not go out of this spot! — A figure of marble! — a 
stone! — A hard and unformed mass, until worked 
with this iron ! — Madman, recover thyself, see thine 
error, groan for thy folly — But no — 

(Impetuously.) 

No, I have not lost my reason ; no, I am not 
wandering ; I reproach myself with nothing. It is 
not of this marble that I am enamoured ; it is of 
a living being whom it resembles ; the figure which 
it presents to my eyes. Wherever this adorable 
form may be, whatever body may bear it, whatever 
hand m.ay have made it, she will have all the 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 309 

VOWS of my heart. Yes, my only folly is in the 
power of discerning beauty; my only crime is being 
sensible to it. There is nothing in this I ought to 
blush for. 

(Less livel}^, but always with passion.) 

What arrows of fire seem to issue from this object 
to burn my senses, and to carry away my soul unto 
their source ! Alas ! she remains immovable and 
cold, while my heart, consumed by her charms, longs 
to quit my own body to give warmth to hers. I 
imagine in my delirium that I could spring from 
myself, that I could give to her my life, that I could 
animate her with my soul. Ah, let Pygmalion die, 
to live in Galatea ! — What do I say, O Heaven? If 
I were she, I should no longer see her ; I should 
not be he that loves her ! — No, let my Galatea live ; 
but let not tne become Galatea. O ! let me always 
be another, always wish her to be herself, to love 
her, to be beloved — 

(Transported.) 

Torments, vows, desires, impotent rage, terrible, 
fatal love — O! all hell is in my agitated heart — 
Powerful, beneficent Gods ! — Gods of the people, 
who know the passions of men, ah, how many mir- 
acles have you done for small causes ! Behold this 
object, look into my heart, be just, and deserve your 
altars ! 

(With a more pathetic enthusiasm.) 

And thou, sublime essence, who, concealing thy- 
self from the senses, art felt in the heart of men, 
soul of the universe, principle of ail existence, thou 
who by love givest harmony to the elements, life to 



2IO THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

matter, feeling to bodies, and form to all beings ; 
sacred fire, celestial Venus, by whom everything is 
preserved, and unceasingly reproduced ! Ah, where 
is thy equalizing justice? Where is thy expansive 
power? Where is the law of nature in the senti- 
ment I experience? Where is thy vivifying warmth 
in the inanity of my vain desires? All thy flames 
are concentrated in my heart, and the coldness of 
death remains upon this marble ; I perish by the 
excess of life which this figure wants. Alas ! I ex- 
pect no prodigy ; already one exists, and ought to 
cease ; order is disturbed, nature is outraged ; restore 
to her laws their empire, re-establish her beneficent 
course, and equally shed thy divine influence. Yes, 
two beings are left out of the plenitude of things. 
Divide between them that devouring ardor which 
consumes the one without animating the other. It 
is thou who hast formed by my hand these charms, 
and these features, which want but life and feeling. 
Give to her the half of mine. Give all, if it be 
necessary. It shall suffice me to live in her. O 
thou ! who deignest to smile upon the homage of 
mortals, this being who feels nothing, honors thee 
not. Extend thy glory with thy works. Goddess 
of beauty, spare this affi'ont to nature, that a form 
so perfect should be an image of which there is no 
living model ! 

(He gradually re-approaches the statue with an air 
of confidence and joy.) 

I resume my senses. What an unexpected calm ! 
What unhoped courage re-animates me ! A mortal 
fever burned my blood, a balm of confidence and 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 211 

hope flows in my veins, and I feel a new life. Thus 
the sense of our dependence sometimes becomes our 
consolation. However unhappy mortals may be, 
when they have invoked the Gods, they are more 
tranquil. — And yet this unjust confidence deceives 
those who form senseless wishes. — Alas ! in the con- 
dition I am in, we call upon every one, and no one 
hears us ; the hope which deceives is more senseless 
than the desire. 

Ashamed of so many follies, I dare no more to con- 
template the cause of them. When I wish to raise 
my eyes towards this fatal object, I feel a new trouble, 
a sudden palpitation takes my breath, a secret tremor 
stops me — 

(With bitter irony.) 

O, look, poor soul ! summon courage enough to 
dare behold a statue. 

(He sees it become animated, and turns away with 
alarm ; his heart oppressed with grief.) 

What have I seen? Gods ! what have I imagined 
that I saw ? A color on the flesh, a fire in the eyes, 
even movement. — It was not enough to hope for a 
miracle ; to complete my misery, at last I have seen — 

(With expressive melancholy.) 

Unhappy creature, all is over with thee — thy de- 
lirium is at its height — thy reason as well as thy 
genius abandons thee. Regret it not, Pygmalion, for 
the loss will conceal thy shame. 

(With indignation.) 

The lover of a stone is too happy in becoming a 
visionary. 

(He turns again, and sees the statue move and de- 



212 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

scene! the steps in front of the pedestal. He falls on 
his knees, and raises his hands and eyes towards 
heaven.) 

Immortal Gods ! Venus, Galatea ! O, illusion 
of a furious love ! 

(Galatea touches herself and says) Me ! 

(Pygmalion transported) — Me ! 

(Galatea touching herself again) — It is myself. 

(Pygmalion) — Ravishing illusion, wdiich even 
reaches my ears ! O, never, never abandon me. 

(Galatea moves towards another figure and touches 
it) — Not myself. 

(Pygmalion in an agitation, in transports which he 
can with difficulty restrain, follows all her movements, 
listens to her, observes her with a covetous attention, 
which scarcely allows him to breathe. Galatea ad- 
vances and looks at him ; he rises hastily, extends his 
arms, and looks at her with delight. She lays her 
hand on his arm ; he trembles, takes the hand, presses 
it to his heart, and covers it with ardent kisses.) 

(Galatea, with a sigh) — Ah ! it is I again. 

(Pygmalion) — Yes, dear and charming object — 
thou worthy masterpiece of my hands, of my heart, 
and of the Gods! It is thou, it is thou alone — I 
have given thee all my being — henceforth I will live 
but for thee. 1820. 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 213 



ON THE SUBURBS OF GENOA AND THE 
COUNTRY ABOUT LONDON.* 

DEAR N. : I could bear my large study t no 
longer ; so I have mounted into my third 
story, and intrenched myself, as usual, in a little 
corner room. It is about the size of the study in 

, where we all adjourned on the morning of 

Twelfth Night, to take breakfast. Do you remember 
that night? how we sung "To ladies' eyes a round, 
boys ; " and how the eyes were as sparkling and tri- 
umphant at six o'clock in the morning, as they were 
at six in the evening? " Can I forget it.?" say you : 
'* Can anybody forget it?" I think not. The very 
walls must remember it. A living poet, whom we 
were near killing with laughter at two in the morn- 
ing, has doubtless w^ritten his best things upon eyes 
since the appearance of that ocular constellation. I 
am sure a living novelist would have made his hero- 
ines equal to the rest of his characters, and done 
himself a world of good into the bargain, had he not 



♦ This essay was carefully corrected for republication by the author, who 
ruthlessly drew his pen through many of its graceful sentences. Though we 
gladly avail ourselves of most of his verbal emendations, we have not the heart to 
omit the pleasant passages which he marked for suppression, and therefore re- 
print the article in its entirety, without the loss of a paragraph. We do not 
think the reader will blame us for retaining the anecdote of Shelley, and the 
description of the suburbs of Genoa. — Ed. 

t There is a description of this study in the chapter on My Books, in the Indi- 
cator. The "dear N." to whom this article is addressed is Vincent Novello, 
" my good CathoHc friend Nov.," of Elia's Chapter On tars. — Ed. 



214 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

had that extra-judicious hackney coach call for him at 
one. Be assured, that pleasant spirits have haunted 
that house ever since. I know^ (without the maid 
servants informing me) that a noise of crystal ring- 
ings and sweet voices is heard every Twelfth Night 
through the rooms ; and that the gallant occupier 
and his wife cannot sleep for the life of them, for 
exquisite imaginations. 

But you must know I have another reason for 
mounting into this nest of mine, in addition to those 
I have given to B. It lifts me above a sense of the 
lanes and stone walls of this suburb of Genoa. Al- 
baro is a pretty name, and a very pretty looking hill 
at a distance. It has also some fine retreats and 
gardens, for those who can afford them. But for a 
place to walk about in, and enjoy one's neighbor's 
goods (to which you know I have a propensity), it 
only shows me how very pre'tty some hills as well as 
women can look at a distance, and what stony-hearted 
creatures they turn out upon inspection. When you 
behold Albaro from the sea, you cry out, " What a 
delicious place to live in ! " Imagine a gentle green 
hill, full of olive trees, vineyards, and country seats, 
beheld from a blue sea, glittering under a blue sky, 
and with the Apennines at the back of it. Enter it, 
and the charm is dissolved. Eternal lanes, with 
eternal stone walls, intersect it in all directions. The 
best are paved like the carriage part of the London 
streets, with a stripe of smoother walk in the middle, 
made of tiles laid edgewise. The worst are com- 
pounded of bits of broken walls, stones, and occa- 
sional pushings forth of the native rock. Some are 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 215 

merely the beds of torrents : but all are lanes, lanes, 
lanes, — all stone, brick, and . mortar, with seldom 
even a hole to look through. Your only resource, as 
in the worst passages of human life, is to imagine 
what may be on the other side ; but then the tanta- 
lization is in proportion. In the summer, the vines 
look over the walls, here and there, and aflbrd a re- 
lief; but the lanes, for the most part, are then hot and 
close, and in those that lead down to the sea the foot- 
ing is still a nuisance. Furthermore, the sea has no 
beach. In winter (which is quite severe enough in 
this quarter of Italy to make you feel it) the prome- 
nade is intolerable. Sometimes a wind comes down 
from the snowy mountains, sharp set as a wolf, and 
more searching than any east wind with us. Besides, 
Genoa being situate between the sea and the moun- 
tains, is famous for wind ; and Albaro, I suppose, 
is the rtiost famous place for wind about Genoa. 
Last winter one would have thought the whole army 
of tempests had come by sea to pass over the moun- 
tains, and go and trample down some incorrigible 
tyranny. The whole cavalcade seemed to sweep over 
us with their " sightless horses," their whistling hair, 
and mad outcries. 

It is little better, for the most part, in the rest of 
the suburbs ; in some of them, not so good. There 
is one good road, which circles the hill ; and on the 
other side of Genoa, there is a wider piece of plain 
to get footing upon. But, generally speaking, your 
path lies up and down hill, through the stoniest of ail 
stony alleys. Even the road which I speak of, round 
Albaro, and which would make a beautiful figure in 



2l6 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

a picture, presenting depths of olive grounds below, 
and the sea in the distance, tantalizes you with the 
sight of pleasant places in which it is impossible to 
enter, and which, if you did enter, it would be im- 
jDOSsible to walk in. The olive grounds are all walled 
in, as usual, and all raised upon terraces of artificial 
earth, lest the torrents should wash them away. But 
w^hat care the Genoese? Nature, with them, is but 
a slave in the hands of the slave merchant. All her 
beauties consist in what they will fetch. Their olive 
trees produce nothing but quattrini and rainestra ; 
their bunches of grapes are but so many purses of 
soldi. They care for nothing but care itself, and a 
good oleaginous dinner to make it worse. 

Now, tell it not in Scotland, lest the cocknies of 
the Canongate rejoice; but give me, dear N., before 
all the barren suburbs in the world (bits of mountain 
included) the green pastures and gentle eminences 
round about glorious London. There we have fields : 
— there one can walk on real positive turf; there 
one can get trees that are of no use, and get under 
trees, and get among trees ; and have hedges, stiles, 
field-paths, sheep and oxen, and other pastoral amen- 
ities : — 

"Sometimes walking, not unseen, 
By the hedge-row elms on hillocks green ; 
While the ploughman, near at hand, 
Whistles o'er the furrowed land, 
And the milkmaid singeth blithe, 
And the mower whets his scythe, 
And every shepherd tells his tale 
Under the hawthorn in the dale." 

How pleasant it is to read one of our poets in a 
foreign country ! I pass from page to page, as I 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 2l7 

used from meadow to meadow, not omitting to enjoy 
the style by the way. 

"Straight mine eye hath caught new pleasures, 
While the landscape round it measures ; 
Russet lawns and fallows gray," 

Observe the coloring ! 

" Where the nibbling flocks do stray: " 

Mark the nicety ! 

"Mountains — " 

Mountains ! what does he mean by that? 

" Mountains on whose barren breast 
The laboring clouds do often rest." 

Genoa pitched in tiie vale of Thames ! He must 
have seen Genoa by a sort of unnatural second sight. 
I beg you to look upon this as an impertinent vision, 
foreign to the subject, or only brought in to show the 
beauty of the rest by the force of contrast. 

" Meadows trim, with daisies pied," 

There he comes home again. 

" Shallow brooks and rivers wide : 
Towers and battlements it sees, 
Bosomed high in tufted trees, 
Where perhaps some beauty lies, 
The Cynosure of neighboring eyes : 
Hard by a cottage chimney smokes 
From betwixt two aged oaks." 

Complete justice is never done to a fine passage in a 
poet, if yoy do not know the one that preceded it : 
just as a new key in a musician demands a compari- 
son with that of the previous air. How admirably 



2l8 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

contrasted, and yet with the properest and mellowest 
gradation, is the richness and elevation of this pas- 
sage about the tufted trees and the high-born beauty in 
their turrets, with the " two aged oaks," and the peas- 
ant's habitation that smokes between them ! — Alas, 
there are no such oaks here, and no such tufted trees I 
— Do you remember our picnics on the grass in the 
Hampstead Fields? Do you remember our books, 
our lounges, our trios, our crowns of field flowers for 
heads " not our own "? Do you recollect that strange 
Centaur of a squire, who came riding in his meadows 
with a monster of a footman behind him, and could 
not help being delighted at seeing our dinner tres- 
passing on his premises? 

I fancy you discern to what all this leads, — the 
sketch that I promised you a long while back, of 
pleasant memories connected with the country about 
London ; similar to those which I have touched upon 
in a former Indicator, connected with the inside of 
it. You are right. I could not delay it longer, if I 
would. 

" All, happy hills 1 ah, pleasing shade ! 

Ah, fields beloved in vain I 
Where once my careless childhood strayed, 

A stranger yet to pain I 
I feel the gales that from ye blow 
A momentary bliss bestow, 

As waving fresh their gladsome wing, 
My weary soul they seem to soothe, 
And redolent of joy and youth, 

To breathe a second spring." 

And yet the fields are not " beloved in vain ; " neither 
was my childhood a stranger to suffering. My life 
has had strong lights and shades upon it from its 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 219 

commencement ; but, upon the whole, I am grateful ; 
and the pleasures I have enjoyed make me love even 
the memory of some of the pains. 

"A dram of sweet is worth a pound of sour." 

How could Gray say that his fields were " beloved in 
vain," when the sight of them, in pain and melan- 
choly, could still please him in this manner ; and when 
he cultivated flowers in his college window to the 
last.? Nature is never beloved in vain. Shakespeare, 
after running the whole round of humanity, went to 
live and to die among his native fields. Rousseau's bot- 
any never forsook him. The oaks are firm friends ; 
and we can love the most blooming of roses in our 
old age. 

In taking my circuit round London, I will begin 
with the east, in order that I may end with the north. 
It is the least pleasant side, yet two out of our four 
greatest names in poetry are connected with it, — 
Spenser and Milton. I have already noticed that 
Spenser was born in East Smithfield. Bunhill Fields 
has the most unromantic of sounds, and yet there 
Milton not only lived, but seems to have delighted to 
live. It is probably the " noble suburban spot," of 
which he speaks in his Latin poems, and contained 
the elm trees of which he was so fond. I do not re- 
member whether I have mentioned before, that Steele 
amused himself with a laboratory at Poplar, which 
is still extant. You may gather from some of the 
works of De Foe, who was a hosier in Cornhill, that 
he was a great walker about the neighborhood of the 
river. An unaccustomed eye, suddenly emerging from 



220 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

the narrow streets upon Tower Hill, is met by a crowd 
of grand and tragical recollections, — by murdered 
patriots and heroes, infants, lovers, and kings. There 
breathed out the souls of the Raleighs and Sydneys. 
There Hutchinson prepared himself to die in patient 
endurance ; and Guilford Dudley and Jane Grey went 
one after the other to the scaffold, instead of the re- 
tirement that suited their innocence. The death of 
another Jane is said to have given its name to Shore- 
ditch. This was Jane Shore, the life of the volup- 
tuous retirements of Edward the Fourth, who was seen 
there in her old age, wrinkled, and gathering water- 
cresses. What a difference from the picture of her, in 
which she is described as having risen " out of her bed 
in the morning, having nothing on but a rich mantle 
cast under one arm over her shoulder, and sitting in a 
chair, on which her naked arm did lie ! " This por- 
trait, by the way, argues a taste, and an eye for col- 
oring, which one should hardly have looked for in the 
paintings of those times. It was, perhaps, the work 
of an Italian. But I shall never get out of town. Of 
Hackney, and all that region, famous for giving a 
name to Hackney coaches, I know nothing more illus- 
trious than what is said of it in some quaint period- 
ical work ; — namely, that 

" Homerton and Clapton do declare, 
'J he many country seats that there are there." 

They tell me, however (is this true?), that I am to 
like a place a little more to the north, the name of 
which I shall not allow myself to be sure of till I hear 
further advices. Let it be as good a name as you 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 321 

can, for I shall " like it most horribly." I remember 
now that I used to go that way to bathe. Besides, 
you have C. L. The great men of the court of Eliza- 
beth must have resided much about the neighborhood 
of Stoke Newington and Highbury, for every old 
mansion thereabout is dignified with the title of one 
of her palaces. A house is still shown at Islington, 
for Raleigh's. At Stoke Newington lived the late 
Dr. Aikin, who was a clever man and did good ; 
though he should not have said, that Spenser's Epi- 
thalamium " wants only judicious curtailment to 
make it a very pleasing piece." I would as lief have 
had the bride curtailed, had I been the hero of it. Dr. 
Aikin's sister, Mrs. Barbauld, still renders the place 
interesting by her residence. Here lived Dr. Watts, 
whose logical head did not hinder his little frail per- 
son from being hypochondriacal, and whose hypo- 
chondria, unfortunately, drove him into Calvinism 
instead of the Bowling-green. But I believe he extri- 
cated himself at last. There wants a good account 
of the last years of men who get rid of their super- 
stitions, as well as of those who are said to have been 
overcome by them. 

To return to the river's side, and cross the water. 
At Greenwich, famous for its green woods and white 
sails, — for its old weather-beaten pensioners, who sit 
eying the placid stream, — and for lasses who kiss 
their mother earth all the way down hill in fair time, 
and their cousin John at the bottom of it, — Qiieen 
Elizabeth held her court ; such a court, as princes 
and courtiers can seldom contrive to muster up. Flat- 
tery there had a sort of right ; and, accordingly, the 



223 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

old Qiieen was a "nymph" to the last, scorching up 
the Hattons and Raleighs with the retrospective 
beauties of seventy. Furthermore, she walked abroad 
among them with a wrinkled face, black teeth, little 
sparkling gray eyes, a hand and arm so white that 
it transported even Dutchmen, and a new gown 
for every day in the year. How she contrived to 
maintain her charms, while dancing and playing on 
the lute, in order to convince a Scotch ambassador 
of her juvenility, who was to look through a crevice, 
none but a Scotchman can say ; and, accordingly, I 
leave it to Sir Walter. If he discovers something to 
venerate in the fumbling of King James, he w^ill sure- 
ly not be at a loss in the tumbling of old Elizabeth. 
At Redrifl' (vainly spelt Rotherhithe) some story-book 
hero cuts a figure ; but I cannot remember his name. 
Down the Kent Road, Chaucer's pilgrims took their 
way to Canterbury, telling stories that have outlasted 
St. Thomas's shrine, and will outlast a thousand 
others. I think I see him now, looking downwards ; 
the Wife of Bath grinning ; the Friars and Summon- 
ers in all their varieties of hypocrisy and impudence; 
the Squire dancing on his horse, conscious of the 
Prioress ; the experienced Knight, his father ; the 
busy Sergeant at Law, who seemed still " busier than 
he was ; " the reckless Sailor ; the unhealthy Cook ; 
the lean meek Scholar, upon his lean horse ; the lean 
choleric Steward, upon his plump one ; the bull of a 
Miller, &c., &c., and Harry Baillie, the host, venting 
his admiration of a pathetic story in a volley of oaths. 
Kent Street derives a minor lustre from Goldsmith's 
Madame Blaze. Newington Butts, as its name de- 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 223 

notes, was famous for archery. With the suburb 
fields, that now contain prisons and bedlams, the 
great poets and wits of Shakespeare's time must have 
been conversant, owing^ to the neighborhood of the 
theatre in the Borough. Their club, at the Mermaid 
in Cornhill, was as convenient a spot as they could 
well choose, between the theatre on one hand, and the 
court and country seats of Elizabeth on the two sides of 
the water on the other. Cambervvell was lately remark- 
able for the proud villa of a Qiiaker physician. Clap- 
ham looks unnatural, with its bankers' houses on a 
bit of wild common. Armstrong, in his poem upon 
preserving health, recommends Dulwich as " yet un- 
spoiled by art." I believe it still retains its character, 
though more houses have come, and the gypsies gone 
away. It touches upon Norwood. Here is Dulwich 
College, founded by one of Shakespeare's fellow-play- 
ers, Allen, — a name which seems to belong to people 
of worth. I know one myself. The original of 
Fielding's Allworthy was another : and the first coun- 
tenence I remember at school was an Allen's, — so 
good and handsome that an old stall-woman, against 
wdiom he happened to run in the street, and to turn 
round upon in the course of her abuse, exclaimed, 

" Confound your great, ugly, driving sweet face, 

God bless it ! " Poor Allen ! he died aboard ship, a 
surgeon, vainly forewarned by Roderick Random. 
What had his blushing maiden face to do in a gang- 
way.'* And yet what would the hard places of the 
world become, if such faces never shone on them ! 
— To Didwich College Sir Francis Bourgeois be- 
queathed his collection of pictures, which it is a holi- 



224 ^^^^ WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

day to go and see. Between Dulwich and Becken- 
bam is a pretty, rustic, out-of-the-way spot, called 
Penge, which an acquaintance of yours thinks the 
charmingest place in the world. Her first child was 
born at BecJ-ienbam. The white spire of Beckenham 
church, issuing out of the trees, is a truly English and 
sylvan spectacle. I think Johnson was in the habit 
of visiting somebody at Beckenham. In the church 
is Gray's epitaph on Mrs. Clarke, " Lo ! where the 
silent marble weeps." Sydenham, another pretty vil- 
lage with a greeny has long been the residence of Mr. 
Campbell. Lewisham was immortalized by Queen 
Elizabeth in a strain of alliterative abuse, which, not 
being a queen, I have not the face to repeat. Retm^ning 
westward, we come to Thrale and Johnson at Streat- 
ham. There Mrs. Thrale encouraged his bile with 
good dinners, and soothed it with gay curtains ; and 
there, it seems, he had a desk on each side a win- 
dow, upon which he used to write his Lives of the 
Poets, — a "mechanical operation of the spirit" 
somewhat too prophetic of the point of criticism at 
which he would stop short. But admiration ever be 
paid to the hero of Boswell, and reverence to the 
good Samaritan who took up the female in the street, 
and put her to bed while other people were chatter- 
ing! At Merton, a pretty place with a pretty appel- 
lation (so at least it seemed to me, when I spent my 
holidays there) lived the illustrious little withered 
lion, Nelson. But it once contained a personage much 
more interesting in my eyes ; to wit, an aunt of mine ; 
a true West Indian of the best sort, somewhat wilful, 
very idle and generous, and a lady to the heart of 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 325 

her. If the mention of these two personages together 
looks like an anticlimax, take the following out of a 
master of the " bon gout," which I think beats it 
hollow. It is Chaullen addressing the Countess of 
Staflbrd : — 

" Vous n'aurez jamais besoin 
De Muse qui vous anime, 
Ni qu' Apollon prenne soin 
De vous montrer le sublime ; 
Car vous trouverez chez vous 
Dans wi Oiiclefort aintable, 
Un maitre plus que capable 
De vous former au bon gout." 

But what has this impertinent Frenchman to do 
with one's young days and one's natural affections? 
Talking of Queen Elizabeth and her Nymphals, I 
remember writing an elegy on the death of this kins- 
woman, in which I called her a " nymph " also, though 
she was between fifty and sixty. Why did she not live 
to be called a damsel.? There was such an elegance 
about her in my eye that I never thought her wrinkled 
face old. And where are you, dear cousin F., that in 
the pride of your tuckers and dressed locks you are 
not still calling me '"'' -petit garqon^' and throwing 
down peaches from the trees to my adoring eyes? 
What had trouble to do with your warm strip of 
West Indianism, that it did not dance and flutter all 
its life in perpetual youth? She had the cruelty to 
give me a little ciystal heart, as if it signified noth- 
ing to the '•' petit garc.on ;'' and I wore it next my 
own at school, with an infinite mixture of pride and 
pensiveness. Few things are better than these fan- 
cies, or even the recollections of them ; and those 
that are, partake of the same character. Let me try 
15 



226 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

as I may, I feel I have nothing greater, much less 
happier in me, than I had when a boy ; nor can I do 
anything better than draw out, as it were, what was 
in me then. Business has only made me uneasy to 
others, and remorseful to myself. My tasks take 
another direction. I am formed by nature to suffer 
and imagine alone, or in company with some friend ; 
and in public to do nothing but impart a sense of the 
joys which love and patience reward me with. 

But what have the peach trees done w'ith me, that 
I stand here in a dream, when I have to make half 
the circuit of London ? Yet I must not forget the little 
River Wandle, wdiich runs b}^ Merton, and in which I 
once saw a vision bright and ideal as any in a picture. 
It was nothing, too, but a girl with long flaxen hair 
and blue eyes, washing some linen with naked feet 
among the pebbles. Her hair was flaxenest of the 
flaxen ; her eyes blue as sapphire ; — it was August ; 
and. the 

" Cjerule stream, rambling in pebble-stone, 
Crept under moss as green as any gourd." 

What she must have thought of me in my school 
petticoats I know not ; but her surprise had the ad- 
vantage of fixing her in a beautiful posture, and 
making her open all her blue eyes. I wish Mr. 
Wordsworth had flourished then, and set " us youth " 
upon attempting to write naturally. I made " a copy 
of verses " afterwards upon the Wandle, which might 
have been a little better for it. When I met with the 
lines upon it in Drayton's Polyolbion, the vision came 
upon me again in all its beauty, only not quite so 
"plump." 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 327 

" Then Wandal cometh in, the Mole's beloved mate. 
So amiable, so fair, so pure, so delicate. 
So plump, so full, so fresh, her eyes so wondrous clear ; 
And first unto her lord at Wandsworth doth appear. 
That in the goodly court of their great sovereign Thames, 
There might no other speech be had amongst the streams 
But only of this nymph, sweet Wandal, what she wore, 
Of her complexion, grace, and how herself she bore." 

Polyolb., Song 17. 

At Wimbledon, when a child, I was taken to see 
Home Tooke, who patted me on the head, and gave 
me a very different benediction from the bishop. In 
a wood near the same place I saw, many years after- 
wards, one of the most successful of ministers, who 
seemed one of the most miserable of men. I have 
pitied him ever since. 

At Putney Gibbon was born, and at Battersea lived 
Bolingbroke. A pretty infidel neighborhood ! I 
think I see Bolingbroke and Swift sitting at the open 
window over the Thames, waiting for Arbuthnot and 
Gay to come from London, and Pope from Twicken- 
ham. Bolingbroke is lounging, with an end of his 
peruke over his shoulder. Swift is fidgeting with 
the girdle of his cassock, or cutting his nails to the 
quick with a penknife. All the banks of the Thames 
upwards are classic ground. At Richmond, in that 
lazy undress of a fat body, called Thomson, lived one 
of the freest, most cordial, and most unexclusive of 
poetical spirits, the most un-Scotck of Scotchmen. 
He was seen eating peaches oft" a tree with his hands 
in his waistcoat pockets ; which is what he ought to 
have done. Out of his enjoyments have come ours. 
Garrick must not be passed by at Hampton, nor old 
Jacob Tonson at Barn Elms, since Congreve and 



228 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

Vanbrugh used to dine with him ; * nor Horace 
Walpole, with his toy-shop and his two-penny no- 
tions, at Strawberry HilL He would have been a 
man, if he had not been a lord. But Twickenham 
and Pope ! What a burst of beauty and wit is there ! 

' ' What lady's that, to whom he gently bends ? 

Who knows not her ? Ah, those are Wortley's eyes, 
The sweet-tongued Murray near her side attends ; 

Now to my heart the glance of Howard flies ; 
Now Harvey, fair of face, I mark full well, 
With thee, youth's youngest daughter, sweet Lepell. 

*' I see two lovely sisters hand in hand, 

The fair-haired Martha, and Teresa brown ; 
Madge Bellenden, the tallest of the land. 

And smiling Mary, fair and soft as down. 
Yonder I see the cheerful duchess stand 

For friendship, zeal, and blithesome humors known : 
Whence that loud shout in such a hearty strain? 
Why, all the Hamiltons are in her train." — Gay. 

We fancy Pope always reading or waiting ; at in- 
tervals entertaining Bolingbroke, Swift, or Arbuthnot, 
or all three ; or undergoing his pleasing provocations 
betwixt the humors of 

" The fair-haired Martha, and Teresa brown." 



* See a pleasant parody by Rowe, on the Dialogue between Horace and 
Lydia. The speakers are Tonson and Congieve. Tonson says, — 

" I'm in with Captain Vanbrugh at the present, 
A most sweet-natured gentleman, and pletisant ; 
He writes your comedies, draws schemes and models, 
And builds duke's houses upon very odd hills." 

Yet he ends with saying, that he would ,t;ive up even Vanbrugh to be reconciled 
with Congreve, and would set up a bed for him in his dining-room at Bow Street 
if he would come and see him. Jacob cuts a better figure here than when he in- 
serted bad money among his payments to poor Dryden for his Virgil. — See the 
letters at the end of Walter Scott's edition of Dryden. 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 229 

Further up, at Chertsey, died good-hearted and 
fine-headed Cowley, — Pope says, of a fever, which 
he caught in consequence of having been drinking 
too freely, and lying out all night in the fields, with 
Dean Sprat. The story is in Spence's Anecdotes, 
but was omitted by Johnson, less out of tenderness, 
I dare say, to the Tory poet, than to the Tory bishop, 
whom he was anxious to exalt. Pope added, that 
" the parish still talked of the dyunkeii DeanT 

Brentford, as Sir Hugh Evans would have said, 
" hath strange reputations." It was celebrated in the 
wars of the Kins^ and Parliament. The " two kinsrs" 
of it are renowned in the Rehearsal. A poet, who 
lived at Richmond, records it as " a town of mud ;" * 
and a king, who lived at Kew, chose it for his pros- 
pect from the other side of the river. At Hammer- 
smith Richardson had a country box. He used to 
bring unexpected nosegays from his garden there to 
his printing office in the city, in order to tempt his 
compositors to be early at their work. 

Kensington is eminent for the heaviest part of the 
gossipping history of courts ; but there are one or two 
literary anecdotes connected with it, which I cannot 
refer to for want of books. There is a poem on the 
Gardens by Tickell. I believe Kent first displayed 
his genius in improving them. There was once some 

* Castle of Indolence, the last stanza. 

" Ev'n so, through Brentford's town, a town of mud, 
An herd of bristly swine is prick'd along," &c. 

Gay records, — 

" Brentford's tedious town, 
For dirt>' streets and white-legged chickens known." 



230 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

inconvenience, perhaps, in walking in them at late 
hours ; but all the rest of the time it was as it should 
be. Now, for " satyrs and sylvan boys," they have 
beadles, who take care that you cultivate nature with 
propriety, and remind you at every turn of the Board 
of Green Cloth. Who can dine on the grass with 
beadles looking at them ? Eating their veal pie under 
favor, and merry by authority? 

At Holland House, still in becoming hands, lived, 
loved, and died Addison ; none of them very happily, 
though much is said about the death. I do not use 
the word '' happy " in a physical sense, but as a ques- 
tion of good taste. Christians can die well undoubt- 
edly : so can good people of all religions ; especially 
if their blood is in a state for reasonable circulation, 
and they are not haunted with fears for others. I do 
not know^ how Steele died. Very pleasantly, I dare 
say, if he had his wits about him ; for Young said, 
that " in his worst state of health, he seemed to desire 
nothing but to please and be pleased." But at all 
events, his last years are preferable to those of Addi- 
son, even though he had given up his property to his 
creditors and retired into Wales. He used to amuse 
himself there with sitting out of doors in a chair, and 
giving prizes to be contended for by the village dam- 
sels. His more prudent friend, who put executions 
in his house to instruct him (which was about as 
good-natured, as Steele thought it, and about as wise 
as damming up a torrent for a fortnight), flourished 
and faded in his grand house under the contempt of 
his wedded countess, and resorted to consolations, 
which, in such a man, and such a man only, provoke 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 23 1 

one to forget the charity which he lost sight of. It is 
a tradition, I believe, in Holland House, that Addison 
used sometimes to compose while pacing up and 
down a long room that had a window at each end, 
and in each window a bottle. What the bottle con- 
tained, more or less, stronger or weaker, is matter of 
speculation. If he thought of poor Steele, I beg his 
pardon ; but why did he not say something about it.'* 
Addison's tavern habits were too much for Pope, who 
w^as obliged to leave off sitting up with him. Dennis, 
according to Spence's Anecdotes, said, that Dryden 
" for the last ten years of his life was much acquainted 
with Addison, and drank with him more than he ever 
used to do ; probably so far as to hasten his end." 
Addison was then a young man. This was beginning 
betimes for the great moralist of the circles. When 
the story of his death-bed is told, it should be added 
(and doubtless would obtain equal admiration) that, 
a fortnight before, he sent for Gay, and told him with 
much penitence, that he had '' injured him greatly," 
but would make it up to him, if he lived. What the 
injury was, does not appear. " Better late than nev- 
er ; " but did he husband this good thing all the while 
he was writing the Spectator, and the charming Satur- 
day articles? The lecture which he wrote to the lady 
who made love to him, and which somehow or other 
transpii'ed^ is of a piece with the rest. Little did 
Calista know of him. Addison had wit at will, a 
delightful style, little things of all sorts in profusion, 
especially when he was in his cups : but he wanted 
greatness of every kind. His virtue, even in its hum- 
blest moment, was but a species of good breeding, 



232 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

equally useful to him, he thought, in and out of the 
presence ; a mixture of prudence, egotism, and sub- 
mission. He was perplexed neither by his sympa- 
thies nor his wisdom (at least he has not suffered an}^ 
such misgivings in the long room to transpire) ; and 
he went to heaven, as he would have gone to court, 
dressed in his most becoming graces a la mode^ and 
preparing himself for a good reception, if not by the 
consciousness of his rank, by the smiling zeal of his 
deference, and the politeness of his securitv. 

In the burying-ground between Bayswater and 
Oxford Street lies " poor Yorick." 

Paddington, '' base, common, and popular" as it 
may now seem, is a very old village, that once had an 
abbey with a flourishing abbot, famous for his pomp 
and hospitality. One side of the road still belongs to 
the church. I have had many reasons for loving it, 
man and boy: — but here begins the ground of mv 
affections, continuing through mead and green lane 
till it reaches beyond Hampstead. In the church- 
yard, by the green, with the fine trees on it, lie two 
of the most irritable spirits that ever disseminated lib- 
eral opinion, — Curran and Dr. Geddes. The tomb 
of Geddes has an epitaph upon it worth a Christian's 
going to see. In front of one of the houses between 
Paddington and Oxford Street, is an almond tree ; 
not " on top of green Pelinis," but " all alone " never- 
theless, and in its due season 

" With blossoms brave bedecked daintily." 

Proprietor of that house and tree, and occupier of 
the house next door, was an old lady, whom I recol- 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 233 

lect, or think I recollect, in my childhood, as a sort 
of perpetual thin-visaged old girl. In vain she walked 
out with a lap-dog, a hood, and an umbrella that was 
also a walking-stick. Her lap-dog, a jealous cur, was 
the only unpleasant thing about her. Her merry 
voice " piped as though it should never grow old." 
And yet, whether I know her best from my own ex- 
perience, or those of my brothers, I forget. At all 
events, her image appears as vivid to me as if I saw it 
carved at the top of lier stick. She was the terror 
and delight of all children ; alternately frightening 
them to death with goblin tricks, and putting them in 
Paradise with indescribable dumplings. What a dif- 
ference between her and another old lady whom I 
knew, who lived in a great house by Paddington 
Church, and was herself frightened to death, and 
worse, by Calvinism! She was one of the kindest 
women in the world ; but she " lived v/ell," and did 
not move about like the other, which would have 
kept her blood from stagnating in that infernal lake. 
I know not to which of the houses it was, but I think 
to the smaller one that belonged those divine green 
rails, which used to dance before me by anticipation 
all the way from home, like a fairy prospect. There 
are no such rails now, as the old gentleman in Gil 
Bias said of the peaches. And yet I have a pleasure 
in seeing hnitations of them too, especially in a poor 
suburb. 

I know not which is the pleasanter way to Hamp- 
stead, the one up Kilburn Lane through West End, or 
the one over the beautiful meadows that ascend to the 
church. Upon the whole, however, I am for the 



234 ^^^ WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

latter, and you generally go that way ; so here is a 
vade-meai77i to read agai7t^ as you take your journey ; 
for that you 77221st read it in the fields, and in those 
identical fields, is certain. If you are obliged to read 
it aloud, I shall not quarrel ; nor even if you are all 
happy in hearing it ; since I shall only gnash my teeth 
with impatience, when I receive the news, which is 
what I am inclined to do every week when I think of 
every friend I have ; so it does not much signify. Out 
of forty tliousand impatiences comes patience. I am 
'' used to it," like the eels. B. shall write me an ac- 
count of it, and put me at my worst ; when I shall, 
of course, grow better. 

Kilburn (the Kele or Cold Bourne) had its ab- 
bey, as well as Paddington. It is said to have stood 
on that pretty green slope on the right hand, as you 
enter the village from London. The Bourne runs 
at the foot of it, and forms afterwards the sheet of 
water facetiously called the Serpentine River. Out 
of the left side of Kilburn runs a lane to a little 
rustic hamlet called Wilsdon, one of the most se- 
cluded spots about London, and celebrated in the 
Literary Pocket Book with a due and united gusto of 
alehouse and pastoral. I dined there one time in 
company with an elegant living poet, whose fancy 
retreated from the " cakes and ale " into a contem- 
plation of the white-curtained room up stairs, which 
he thought very amiable. White-curtained rooms are 
amiable. There are no such little draperied simplici- 
ties here, with woodbine and diamond windows j 
though there are heads of hair that would look well, 
looking out. Another time I had a delightful dinner 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 235 

with W. C, in a room hung with Honbracken's en- 
gravings of the poets. There was a '' niece" to wait 
on us (may nobody make her look less happy and 
pretty than she did then !), and a considerable appe- 
tite on both sides. C. acknowledged it was '• the sort 
of thing." 

The lane leading on the right hand up to Hamp- 
stead winds pleasantly through tliick hedges and fer- 
tile fields, and opens at West End upon a beautiful 
view of Hampstead and the Church. From the re- 
tirement of West End, fate once pitched me into a 
very different sort of seclusion in IIorsei7io7iger Lane 
(think of the name !), as if I had been no better than 
a quoit. It was a quoit, however, that had shattered 
some very hyacinthine locks. 

We have now entered Hampstead, the region of 
all suburban ruralities, of paths leading upward and 
downward, of groves, of prospects, of meadows and 
wood, of remote-looking lanes, of a remnant of wild 
nature, of classical recollections. When I returned 
from the very different lane just mentioned, I hastened 
to re-occupy a bench that stood in a delightful slope, 
and overlooked West End. I found it pushed away 
by the fantastic house that now stands there, mystify- 
ing the fields, and mocking antiquity. C. L. could not 
have been more startled when he saw the chimney- 
sweeper reclining in Richmond meadows. Had the 
chimney-sweeper found the wonderful lamp he might 
have raised just such a structure. 

" With twenty murders of good taste upon it. 
To push us from our stools." 



236 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

Near this alarming fact (not the tenement next to it, 
but the first one on the right hand as you look up the 
lane) is a white house, in which Dr. Johnson took 
lodgings for his wife, crossing the fields to come to 
her of an evening. The road leads straight on from 
here to the heath. Let me leave the church on my 
right, with my usual reverence and silence. Every 
spot from this place is sacred to me for some recol- 
lection. Good God, how clearly I see everything ! 
how vividly every corner turns upon me, with its 
trees, its gateways, or its mounds ! On the right, in 
the first floor of a cottage, lived the last of the Mul- 
sos, — at least, so I fancy her, for she was a maiden 
lady, and ought to have been the last, if she was not. 
(Not that I have any objection to the Mulsos, but 
Richardson and a continuation of the species some- 
how do not agree ; though Pamela thought other- 
wise.) On the left I stood with dear S. and M. S., 
drawing ideal pictures of housekeeping. On the right 
again I kissed somebody that shall be nameless. Here 
I read; there I wrote something; there I used to 
turn down on horseback ; and there I was thrown 
from my horse, to the great displeasure of a lady's 
maid, who, upon my assuring her I was not hurt, 
was angry that I had made her so nervous. Let me 
rest a while in the grove overlooking the heath, and 
fancy I am. reading my Spenser. — I'll get up and 
cross to North End. At North End, across the heath, 
under the wing of his friend Dyson, lived Akenside. 
He calls the slope leading into the Llendon Road, 
Goulder's Hill; and altogether made as much of his 
suburb as the greatest cockney of us all. Milton could 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 237 

not have said more for his " noble suburban spot," or 
for the boarding-school girls whom he used to deify. 
" Hampstead's airy summit" anybody may speak of, 
but none but a lover could have talked of " climbing " 
its " steep aerial way," especially on the north. He 
was then, however, weak and sick, — sick, too, in the 
lungs ; though so fond was he of the place, that even 
the north wind did not come amiss to him. See his 
Odes ; where, amidst a great deal of what is prosa- 
ical, and nothing that is lyrical, the real poet occa- 
sionally looks forth. 

"Thy verdant scenes, O Goulder's Hill, 

Once more I seek, a languid guest ; 

With throbbing temples, and with burdened breast, 

Once more I climb thy steep aerial way. 

O faithful care of oft-returning ill ! 

Now call thy sprightly breezes round, 

Dissolve this rigid cough profound, 
And bid the springs of life with gentler movement play. 

" How gladly, 'mid the dews of dawn, 

My weary lungs thy healing gale. 

The balmy west, or the fresh north, inhale ! 

How gladly, while my musing footsteps rove 

Round the cool orchard or the sunny lawTi, 

Awaked I stop, and look tojiiid 

What shrub perfumes the pleasant wind. 
Or what wild songster charms the Dryads of the grove." 

All this reminds me, but too painfully, of another 
and greater poet, a lover of Hampstead, of whom 
more presently. North End, seen from the heath 
above it on the south-east, presents one of the prettiest 
village pictures I am acquainted with, — trees, gar- 
dens, and smoking cottages, with a mansion here 
and there. The road that runs over the heath be- 
tween this and the Vale of HeaUh is a remnant of 



238 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

the old Roman Road or Watling Street, and is praised 
by Camden for the beauty of its prospects. You can 
see from it to Windsor, and the borders of Bucking- 
hamshire. The clumps of pines before the place 
where Lord Erskine lived, are of Italian origin, hav- 
ing been, in fact (as I understand), brought from 
Italy by the person who built the mansion that looks 
down them. Nearly opposite, on the other side of 
the road, are nine elms, under which it is recorded 
that Pope and Lord Mansfield used to sit. It must 
not be omitted, to the eternal honor of Mr. Coxe, 
poet and auctioneer, and also of Lord Mansfield's 
eminent successor, that the noble lord having an in- 
tention of cutting down these nine elms, Mr. Coxe 
made a becoming petition in the name of the Nine 
Muses, which it was impossible for an* Erskine to 
resist. So the elms are where they used to be, with, 
I hope, a better seat under them. At Caen Wood, 
the fine seat of the Mansfields, there is a portrait of 
Betterton the player, which is said to be from the 
hand of Pope. On the right of the Highgate Road, 
pleasant meadows lead over to pleasant phices, — 
Plendon and Finchley ; on the left a lane turns off' to 
Highgate and Kentish Town, justly christened Poet's 
Lane, both on account of its rural beauty and the 
walks here enjoyed by Mr. Coleridge, Mr. Keats, and 
others. There is a beautiful cottage and farm in it 
(only the cottage is too near the lodge) that belonged 
to Lord Southampton. The path over the fields to 
Highgate, or back again to the Vale of Health or the 
Heath, is quite lovely. Who knows it better than 
yourself? But you like me to repeat it. It was from 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 239 

a house on the eastern part of the heath that Keats 
took his departure to Italy. MeLancholy as it was, 
and the more so from his attempt to render it cahn 
and cheerful, it was not the most melancholy circum- 
stance under which I saw him there. I could not 
hinder him one day from going to visit the house, in 
which, though he was himself ill and weak, he at- 
tended with such exemplary affection his younger 
brother that died. Dead almost himself by that time, 
the circumstance shook him beyond what he expected. 
The house was in Well Walk. You know the grove 
of elms there. It was in that grove, on the bench 
next the heath, that he suddenly turned upon me, his 
eyes swimming with tears, and told me he was " dy- 
ing of a broken heart." He must have been wonder- 
fully excited to make such a confession ; for his spirit 
was lofty to a degree of pride. Some private circum- 
stances pressed on him at the time; and to these he 
added the melancholy consciousness, that his feeble 
state of health made him sensible of some public an- 
noyances, which no man would sooner otherwise have 
despised. His heart was afterwards soothed where 
he wished it to be ; and when he took his departure 
for Italy he had hope, or he would hardly have gone. 
Even I had hope. — My weaker e3^es are obliged to 
break off. He lies under the walls of Rome, not far 
from the remains of one, who so soon and so abruptly 
joined him. Finer hearts, or more astonishing facul- 
ties, never were broken up than in those two. To 
praise any man's heart by the side of Shelley's, is 
alone an extraordinary panegyric. 

You l:now what I must think of Hampstead. when 



240 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

the memories of two such men come in aid of all that 
endeared me to it before. Its beauty and its classical 
associations are enough to render it interesting to 
everybody ; but love and friendship of all sorts have 
also hallowed it to me. It pleases me to think, that 
kindred hearts with these have delighted in the place 
before. A little after you enter the town from Lon- 
don is a mansion which belonged to Sir Henry 
Vane, — the most exalted and extraordinary intellect, 
except Milton, of an age of great men ; and one, 
perhaps, who saw still farther than Milton into the 
capabilities of society, in spite of the puritanical cloud 
in which he wrapped up his Platonism. Here also 
Day, the manly-spirited author of Sandford and Mer- 
ton, brought his new-married wife, who talked and 
walked with him to his heart's content; and in the 
long room in Well Walk, now the chapel, but then 
the pump-room for the mineral waters, used to be seen 
one of the most amiable of men of wit, Arbuthnot, 
who came there to get the health which he distributed 
to thousands. I was going to say the most amiable 
of physicians, but I recollected Garth. Garth was 
often at Hampstead, if he never lived there, for he 
used to come to join the Kit-Kat Club at their sum- 
mer dinners. He lies buried at Harrow, purely to 
oblige one's prospect. The club met at the last 
house on the hill, before you turn down into the 
Vale of Health. It is now a private residence ; — 
a long low house, with trees before it. I write this 
for your fellow-readers. There is a series of his- 
tories belonging to this house. In the first place, 
it was the scene of the summer meetings of the 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 24I 

Club aforesaid, consisting of Steele, Addison, Con- 
greve, Garth, Vanbrugh, and other wits and great 
Whigs. When Steele was hiding from his duns in 
a cottage on Haverstock Hill (which is still re- 
maining), they used to call for him by the way. 
After this, Richardson made it the scene of one 
of Clarissa's flights : on which account a French- 
man is said to have made a pilgrimage on pur- 
pose to see it. It was hitherto an inn, known by 
the name of the Upper Flask. Being afterwards 
converted into a private dwelling-house, it became 
the residence of George Steevens, the commentator 
on Shakespeare, who used to walk to London every 
morning at daybreak to correct the press. But 
another anecdote remains, not the least in interest. 
I will repeat it for the benefit of the readers above 
mentioned. Some years ago, when the house was 
occupied by a person whose name I forget (and I 
should suppress it in common humanity if I did not), 
I was returning home to my own, which was at no 
great distance from it, after the opera. As I ap- 
proached my door, I heard strange and alarming 
shrieks mixed with the voice of a man. The next day 
it was reported by the gossips that Mr. Shelley, no 
Christian (for it was he who was there), had brought 
some " very strange female " in the house, no better, 
of course, than she ought to be, — the consequences 
of which, of course, were no other than what they 
ought to be, and what decent imaginations might 
guess. Alas, their decent imaginations would "never 
have got at the truth, had they carved it and Chris- 
tianed it till doomsday. The real Christian had 
16 



242 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

puzzled them. Mr. Shelley, in coming to our house 
that night, had found a woman lying near the top of 
the hill in fits. It was a fierce winter night, with 
snow upon the ground ; and winter loses nothing of 
its fierceness at Hampstead. My friend, always the 
promptest as well as the most pitying on these occa- 
sions, knocked at the first houses he could reach, in 
order to have the woman taken in. The invariable 
answer was that they could not do it. He asked for 
an outhouse to put her in while he went for a doctor. 
Impossible. In vain he assured them she was no 
impostor, — an assurance he was well able to give, 
having studied something of medicine, and even 
walked the hospitals^ that he might be useful in this 
way. They would not dis^Dute the point with him; 
but doors were closed, and windows were shut down. 
Had he lit upon worthy Mr. Park, the philologist, 
he would assuredly have come, in spite of his Calvin- 
ism. But he lived too far oft^. Had he lit upon you, 
dear B — n, or your neighbor, D — e, you would, 
either of you, have jumped up from amidst your books 
or your bed-clothes, and have gone out with him. 
But the paucity of Christians is astonishing, consid- 
ering the number of them. Time flies ; the poor 
woman is in convulsions ; her son, a young man, la- 
menting over her. At last my friend sees a carriage 
driving up to a house at a little distance. The knock 
is given ; the warm door opens ; servants and lights 
pour forth. Now, thought he, is the time. He puts 
on his best address, which anybody might recognize 
for that of the highest gentleman as well as an inter- 
esting individual, and plants himself in the way of 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 243 

an elderly person who is stepping out of the carriage 
with his family. He tells his story. They only press 
on the faster. "Will you go and see her?" "No 
sir, there is no necessity for that sort of thing, depend 
on it: — impostors swarm everywhere: — the thing 
cannot be done : — sir, your conduct is extraordi- 
nary." " Sir," cried Mr. Shelley at last, assuming a 
very different appearance, and forcing the flourishing 
householder to stop out of astonishment, " I am sorry 
to say that your conduct is not extraordinary : and 
if my own seems to amaze you, I will tell you some- 
thing that may amaze you a little more, and I hope 
will frighten you. It is such men as you who madden 
the spirits and the patience of the poor and wretched ; 
and if ever a convulsion comes in this country (which 
is very probable) recollect what I tell you ; — you 
will have your house, which you refuse to put this 
miserable woman into, burnt over yowr head." " God 
bless me, sir ! Dear me, sir ! " exclaimed the fright- 
ened wretch, and fluttered into his mansion. The 
woman was then brought to our house, which was at 
some distance, and down a bleak path ; and Mr. S. 
and her son were obliged to hold her till the doctor 
could arrive. It appeared that she had been attend- 
ing this son in London, on a criminal charge made 
against him, the agitation of which had thrown her 
into the fits on their return. The doctor said that 
she would inevitably have perished had she lain there 
only a short time longer. The next day my friend 
sent mother and son comfortably home to Hendon, 
where they were well known, and whence they re- 
turned him thanks full of gratitude. Now go, ye 



244 "^^^ WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

Pharisees of all sorts, and try if ye can still open 
your hearts and your doors, like the good Samaritan. 
This man was himself, too, brought up in a splendid 
mansion, and might have revelled and rioted in all 
worldly goods. Yet this was one of the most ordi- 
nary of his actions. 

Dear N., I know I cannot delight you more than 
by repeating the praises of another friend : — so richly 
in this respect has heaven compensated me, for a 
thousand evils, in things of which even death cannot 
deprive me. « 

P. S. — Among other suburban dwellers about 
London, I have omitted to mention in the course of 
this article, that Sir Thomas More lived at Chelsea ; 
that Thomas Moore hummed a short time at Horn- 
sey ; and that Coleridge resides at Highgate, a " stroll- 
er with a book." 1823. 



DR. JOHNSON, THE DEVIL, AND MR. 
COBBETT. 



a '' I "*HE office of the Register, and my shop, are now 
I at No. 1 1 Bolt Court, Fleet Street. It is curious 
that I am now in the very house in which Old 
Dread-Devil, Dr. Johnson, lived and wrote so many 
years ! I have been a long while wanting to get it, 
on account of the cleanness, neatness, and stillness of 
the court, and the nearness of the house to the print- 
ing-office ; but until three days ago, I was not at all 
aware, tliat the melancholy moralist ever lived in it. 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 245 

There is a neat coffee-house in the court, called ' The 
Dr. Johnson ; ' and though I cannot forgive the doc- 
tor for having given, in his own person, an example 
to illustrate the definition in his dictionary, w^here, 
against the word ' Pensioner,' he puts a slave of 
state; though I cannot forgive him for this, to see, as 
I do, from my window, his najne put over a coffee- 
room, with a view to attract custom to it, is very 
pleasing: his name, thus used, is a mark of respect 
for his great mental endowments and vast literary la- 
bors, while his statue in St. Paul's is only a memorial 
of his having been a slave of state.'*' — Cobbetfs 
Register. 

We like these self-references of Mr. Cobbett, when 
his humanities are upon him, and he has a good word 
to say for another. A piece of sympathy, from him, 
is the more pleasant, inasmuch as he seems to think 
it to be his duty to be full of antipathies (" a good 
hater," as Johnson called it), and to push them to the 
utmost. We think he might relent a little during this 
fine, promising weather in the political world, and give 
us a few more of his " primroses" and pleasant an- 
ecdotes. 

Dr. Johnson was one of the last of our great men, 
who had reason, throughout life, to curse the super- 
stition inflicted upon him in childhood. His mother, 
poor woman, when he was just able to learn what 
she meant, was so eager to impress upon him the doc- 
trine of eternal punishment, that she not only made 
him get out of his bed on purpose to infix it the more 
on his recollection, but called up the servants to aid 
the calamity. Mr. Cobbett, therefore, has too much 
reason to call him " Dread-Devil ; " but our politician, 



246 THE WISIIING-CAP PAPERS. 

in proceeding to sa}^ something to his advantage, 
might have added another good word for tlie " mel- 
ancholy moralist," since it was into his house, in this 
very Bolt Court, if we mistake not, that the doctor, 
who was a kind-hearted man, notwithstanding the 
asperities of his temperament, acted the very unusual 
Christian part, like a proper Samaritan, of bringing 
a poor girl on his shoulders, whom he found destitute 
in the streets, putting her into his own bed, making 
her w^ell, and sending her home to her relations. 

In Bolt Court, Johnson wrote the Lives of the Poets. 
He lived there from the year 1776 till he died. He 
had a garden to the house (Mr. Cobbett, who is hor- 
ticultural, should revive it), with stone seats at the 
door. Boswell describes a conversation he had with 
him one day, when each took a seat in the open air, 
and the doctor was " in a placid frame of mind, and 
talked away easily." 1S30. 



COFFEE-HOUSES AND SMOKING. 

SMOKING has had its vicissitudes, as well as 
other fashions. In Elizabeth's day, when it first 
came up, it was a high accomplishment: James (who 
liked it none the better for its beinof of Raleisfh's in- 
vention) indignantly refused it the light of his counte- 
nance: in Charles's time it was dashed out by the 
cannon ; lips had no leisure for it under Charles the 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. -247 

Second : the clubs and the Dutch brought it back again 
with King William : it prevailed more or less during 
the reign of the first two Georges ; grew thin, and 
died away under George the Third ; and has lately 
reappeared, with a flourish of Turkish pipes, and 
through the milder medium of the cigar, under the 
auspices of his successor. 

The last smoker I recollect among those of the old 
school, was a clergyman. He had seen the best so- 
ciety, and was a man of the most polished behavior. 
This did not hinder him from taking his pipe every 
evening before he went to bed. He sat in his arm- 
chair, his back gently bending, his knees a little apart, 
his eyes placidly inclined towards the fire : and de- 
lighted, in the intervals of puff, to recount anecdotes 
of the Marquis of Rockingham and " my Lord 
North." The end of his recreation was announced to 
those who had gone to bed, by the tapping of the 
bovs^l of his pipe upon the hob, for the purpose of 
emptying it of its ashes.* Ashes to ashes ; head to 
bed. It is a pity that the long day of life cannot al- 
ways terminate as pleasantly. Bacon said that the 
art of making death-beds easy was among tlie desid- 
erata of knowledge. Perhaps, for the most part, they 
are easier than the great chancellor imagined ; but, 



* This lover of " the great plant " was Leigh Hunt's father, who,- as a smoker, 
is thus described in The Autobiogi-aphy of Leigh Hunt: "He was one of 
the gentry who retained the old lashion of smoking. He indulged in it every 
right before he went to bed, which he did at an early hour ; and it was pleasant 
toseehimsit, in his tranquil and gentlemanly manner, and relate anecdotes of 
'my Lord North,' and the Rockingham administration, interspersed with those 
mild puffs and urbane resumptions of the pipe." — Ed. 



248 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

no doubt, the most conscientious ones might often be 
bettered. A virtuous man shall not always take his 
departure as comfortably as a sinner with a livelier 
state of diaphragm. Frenchmen have died, sitting in 
their chairs, full-dressed and powdered. I have a 
better taste in mortality than that ; but I think I could 
drop off with a decent compromise between thought 
and forgetfidness, sitting with my pipe by a fireside, 
in an old elbow-chair. 

I delight to think of the times when smoking was 
an ornament of literature, a refreshment and repose 
to the studious head; when Hobbes meditated, and 
Cowle}' built his castles in those warmer clouds, and 
Dr. Aldrich his quadrangles. In smoking, you may 
think or not think, as you please. If the mind is ac- 
tively employed, the pipe keeps it in a state of satis- 
faction, supplies it with a side luxury, a soft ground 
to work upon. If you w^ish to be idle, the successive 
puffs take the place of thinking. There is a negative 
activity in it, that fills up the place of real. Intruding 
notions are met with a puff in their teeth, and puffed 
into nothing. Studious men are subject to a working 
and fermenting of thought, when their meditations 
would fain be over : they cannot always cease meditat- 
ing. Bacon was accustomed to takeadraughtof March 
beer towards bedtime, to settle this asstuary of his 
mind. I wonder he did not take a pipe, as a gentler 
carrier off' of that uneasiness. Being a link between 
thought and no tliought, one would imagine it would 
have been a more advisable compromise with his state 
of excitement than the dashing of one stream upon 
another in that violent manner, and forcing: his nerves 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 249 

to behave themselves. There are delicate heads, I 
am aware, that cannot bear even a cigar. Smoking, 
of any sort, makes too sudden an appeal to the con- 
nection between their sensitive nerves and the stom- 
ach ; produces what the doctor's call predigestion, and 
is rebuked with a pujiishment of the weaker part, to 
wit, the brain. Bacon's might have been such in his 
old age, after all the service it had seen ; but I won- 
der, on that account, that he resorted to the jolly and 
fox-hunting succedaneum of beer. A walk w^ould 
have been better. " After study walk a mile." The 
object is to restore the blood gradually to motion, ar- 
rested as it has been with many thoughts, and con- 
fused when they let it go. Now a pipe is a more 

gradual restorative than a drauijht. As it is a shad- 
es cr> 

owing off between thinking and no thinking, so it is a 
preparer for sleep, and a reconciler with want of 
company. 

But the genius of smoking, being truly philosophi- 
cal, has its love of society too : and then it resorts to 
a cup. Among Mr. Stothard's agreeable designs 
for the Spectator, there is one of the club over a table, 
with their pipes and their wine. Captain Sentry is 
going to light his pipe at the candle ; Sir Roger is 
sitting with his knees apart, like the old gentleman I 
have been describing, in the act of preparing his, — 
perhaps thinking what a pretty tobacco-stopper the 
widow's finger would have made. One longs to be 
among them. As I never pass Covent Garden (and 
I pass it very often) without thinking of all the old 
coffee-houses and the wits, so I can never reflect, 
without impatience, that there are no such meetings 



250 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

nowadays, and no coflee-room that looks as if it 
would suit them. People confine themselves too 
much to their pews and boxes. In former times 
there was a more humane openness of intercourse. 
Different parties had indeed their respective places 
of resort ; a natural consequence of politics, perhaps 
of letters ; but this prevented ungraceful quarrels. 
Hostility might get in, but was obliged to behave itself. 
Dryden, who was the object of attack to an increasing 
horde of scribblers, was never insulted in his coffee- 
house. Even the bravos of Lord Rochester, or who- 
ever it was that had him waylaid in Rose Alley, did 
not venture to disturb the peace of his symposium. 
The room in which he sat is described as open to all 
comers, and he occupied a prominent part in it. In 
winter a place was sacred for him at the fireside. 

I confess, if I were a wit, I would rather have a 
room to myself and friends. I should like to be pub- 
lic only in my books. But this is a taste origina- 
ting in the times. Dryden was a modest man in his 
intercourse ; and was never charged, I believe, 
among all the accusations of vanity brought against 
him, of being the vainer for frequenting a cofiee- 
room. Being a lover of wits, I should like to see 
the times alter in this respect, and the great men 
of all parties become visible. But where could they 
be so? Where could the pleasant fellows among 
our existing Whigs and Tories take up one of their 
respective tabernacles, and make a religion of our 
going to hear them, and aspiring to a pinch out of 
their snufi-boxes? I w^as thinking of this, as I 
passed through Covent Garden the other evening. 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 25 1 

Above all, said I, where could we have the whole 
warmth of the intercourse revived, the Spectator's 
tobacco-pipe and all, especially when it is no longer 
the fashion to drink wine? It would take a great 
deal to fetch Englishmen again out of their boxes. 
They do not allow smoking in the best coflee-houses ; 
and where they do, so many other things are allowed, 
that no gentleman would remain. Where shall I 
place my imaginary coterie, and fancy myself listen- 
ing to the Drydens and Addisons of the day? It 
is the fashion now for your wilder writers in mag- 
azines to patronize, or pretend to patronize, some 
house of call, or vociferation, the mediocrity of which 
shall give them an air of vigor and defiance in the 
patronage, and prove them men of originality. There 
is something pleasant in this where it is not an af- 
fectation of superiority to prejudice, arising out of an 
absolute sense to the contrary, and betraying itself 
by a tone of bullying. But real or not, and with 
all my regard for those honest houses, where the 
only sophisticate thing is the presence of some of 
their panegyrists, they will not do for the purpose 
before us. Due is my consideration for the Dog and 
the Coal-hole: pungent my sense of the Cheshire 
Cheese : the Hole in the Wall has a snug appella- 
tion ; and as for Dolly's Beef- Steak House^ great 
would be my ingratitude, did I forget its hot pewter- 
plate, new bread, floury potatoes, foaming pot of 
porter, and perfect beefsteak. The man that cannot 
enjoy a beefsteak there, can enjoy a stomach no- 
where. But it is not what I was seeking the other 
night. Neither is the Hummums, nor the Bedford, 



252 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

nor the Piazza, nor the Southampton, nor the 
Salopian.* 

During these meditations, I approach my friend 
Gliddon's snutF and tobacco-shop, in King Street. 
Ay, here, said I, is wherewithal to fill the boxes of the 
Steeles and Congreves, and the pipes of the Aldriches 
and Sir Roger de Coverleys. But where is the room 
in which we can fancy them? Where is the coffee- 
house to match? Where the union of a certain do- 
mestic comfort with publicity, — journals of literature 
as well as news, — a fire visible to all, — cups with- 
out inebriety, — smoking without vulgarity? On a 
sudden, I find carriages stopping at the door ; I rec- 
ognize an acquaintance of mine, a member of Par- 
liament, who does not easily come out of his way 
to fill a snuff-box : I hear a gentleman inquiring 
about the coffee-room, and '• whether Prince Ester- 
hazy is to be turned away again b}^ a stress of com- 
pany." I enter, and ask my old acquaintance what 
miracle he has been about. He points to a board 
in his shop, and then takes me thr(5ugh a door in 
the wall into the very room that I v/as looking for. 
It was rather two rooms thrown into one, and with 
a fire in each; a divan of ample dimensions runs 



* The Salopian House is immortalized in Elia's essay on The Praise of Chim- 
ney- Sweepers. It was at the Southampton tavern that Hazlitt's " Coffee-House 
Politicians " met to read the papers and discuss the news of the day. The Bed- 
ford Coffee-House was frequented by Colman and Thornton, the lively authors of 
the Connoisseur. "This coffee-house," says Mr. Town, in his survey of 
London, " is every night crowded with men of parts. Almost every one you 
meet is a polite scholar and a wit. Jokes and bon mots are echoed from box to 
box; every branch of literature is critically examined, and the merits of every pro- 
duction of Ihe press, or performance at the theatre, weighed and determined. " — 
Connoi'tseur, No. i. — Ed. 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 253 

round it; lamps of ground glass diffuse a soft, yet 
sufficing light ; the floor is carpeted ; two cheerful 
fires ofler double facility of approach, a twofold 
provocation to poke and be self-possessed ; around 
are small mahogany tables, with chairs, in addition 
to the divan ; and in the midst of all, stands a large 
one, profusely covered with the periodical works of 
the day, newspapers, magazines, and publications 
that come out in numbers. I sit down, and am 
initiated with the hospitality due to an old friend, 
in all the amenities of the place. A cigar and an 
excellent cup of coffee are served. " But will you 
have as good coftee at the end of the year?" — 
" Can you ask me that question, Mr. Honeycomb * 
— you, who have known me long.^" — ""Well, if 
anybody that ever kept a shop can do it, it is you : 
and I tell you what ; — if you do, depend upon it, 
no success will be like yours. Good fortune produces 
abuse of it ; but the abuse is always as impolitic, 
compared with a genuine policy, as cunning is in- 
ferior to wisdom. If there were any one shop in 
London, in which the customer for a series of years 
were sure to find one undeviating goodness of arti- 
cle, the phenomenon would attract and retain all 
eyes. And these cigars : the boy tells me they are 
excellent also. Is this true.?" — "I can tell 
you one thing they say of them, by which you may 
judge for yourself; they say they are smuggled." — 
" O, ho ! " 

"And snatch a grace beyond the reach of law." 

* This paper was published under the signature of Harry Honeycomb, a pre- 
tended descendant of the famous Wil] Honeycomb of the Spectator. — Ed. 



254 ^^^ WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

You know how the law picked my pocket once. 
Before that time, I was so tender of conscience, 
that when I was at Hastings I would not pur- 
chase a toy or a pair of gloves that was contra- 
band ;• whereas nozu — I will not ask you to make 
me certain whether the articles are smuggled or not 
— say no more — rest your insinuating fame on that. 
But a prettier-tasted cigar — a leaf with a finer tip of 
flavor in it, — pi'ay, how many cigars might a man 
smoke of an evening? I have a great mind to try. 
But I must look at your publications. By the way, 
you have no pipes, I see ; and I observe no bottles. 
Have you neither pipes nor wine? " — ^' No, we are 
exclusively cigar ; we have coffee, sherbet, lemonade, 
all reasonable Oriental drinks to harmonize with our 
divan, but nothing to disturb the peace of it. Thus 
we secure a certain domestic elegance in-doors, and 
can prevent drunkards from coming in to get drunker. 
A gentleman may come from his dining or drawing- 
room, and still find himself in a manner at home. 
Besides, a cigar is the mildest as well as most fash- 
ionable form of tobacco-taking ; and as it is no longer 
the mode to drink wine, wine is not sought after." * 



* In the article entitled Of the Sight of Shops, as published in the original 
edition of the Indicator, there is a very graceful and handsome mention of Mr. 
Honeycomb's friend Gliddon.of King Street, formerly of No. 31 Tavistock Street. 

" We presume that snuff-takers delight to solace themselves with a pinch of 
Thirty-seven ; and we accordingly do so in imagination at our friend Gliddon's in 
Tavistock Street, who is a higher kind of Lilly to the Indicator, — our papers lying 
among the piquant snuffs, as those of our illustrious predecessor The Tatler did 
among Mr. Lilly's perfumes at the corner of Beaufort Buildings. Since the 
peace with France, the shops of our tobacconists have become as amusing as 
print-shops ; though not always, it must be confessed, in a style of delicacy be- 
coming their enamoured boxes. At our friend's in Tavistock Street everything is 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 255 

— " That is all verygood for you ; but for me, who 
have been castnig a wistful eye, as I came along, at 
the old haunts of Sir Roger and his friends, I confess 
it is a drawback on a certain fancy I had, when I first 
came in. However, we must consider what Steele 
and Addison would have liked had they lived now, 
and witnessed the effect of the Spectators of other men. 
It is they that have helped to ruin their own pipes and 
wine, and given us a greater taste for literature and 
domesticity; and I comfort myself with concluding, 
that they would have come here, at least after their 
bottle, to take their coffee and look over your papers 
and magazines. There he sits, over the way, — 
Steele, I mean, — the man with the short face ; for I 
perceive there is wit at that table. Opposite him is 
Addison, in black, looking something like a master 
in chancery. The handsome man, always on the gig- 
gle, must be Rowe ; and the other one, an officer, is 
Colonel Brett. But who is this tall formal personage 
coming up ? Look at him, — the very man, Ambrose 
Phillips. Who would think that his muse was a lit- 
tle dancer in octosyllables, — a dandier of young 
ladies of quality.^ " 

Mine host left me alone to complete my initiation. 
Another cup of coffee was brought me, and five sev- 
eral publications ; to wit, a newspaper, a twopenny 
sheet, a nuinber to be continued, a magazine, and a 
review ; for I am fond of having too many books at 

managed in a way equally delicate and cordial ; and while the leisurely man of 
taste buys his Paris or his Indicator, the busier one may learn how to set up his 
gas-light in good classicil style, and both see how completely even a woman of 
true feelings, can retain the easiest and pleasantest good-breeding in the midst 
of observant eyes and humble occupitiou." — liu. 



256 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

once. I looked over these, and then, contented with 
the power to read them further, continued giviftg 
bland puffs to my cigar, and speculating around me. 
The conversations were maintained in very quiet 
and gentlemanly tones : now and then was heard 
the sound of a leaf turning over; sometimes a hem, 
consequential or otherwise ; my own puffs were al- 
ways distinguishable to myself; and at intervals I 
could discern those of others, and hear the social 
crackling of the fire. No noisy altercation here ; no 
sanded floors or cold feet ; no impatient waiting for the 
newspaper ; * while the person in possession keeps 
it the longer because you wait : all is warm, easy, 
quiet, abundant, satisfactory. 

I conclude the principal visitors of the divan to be 
theatre-goers, officers who have learnt to love a cigar 
on service, men of letters, and men of fortune who 
have a taste for letters, and can wdiirl themselves from 
their own firesides to these. If you are in the city, on 
business, go for a steak to Dolly's ; if midway between 
City and West End, go to the first clean-looking lar- 
der you come to ; if a man of fashion, and you must 
dine in your altitudes, go to the Clarendon ; but after 
any of these, man of fashion or not, go if you can, and 
get your cigar and your cup of coffee at Gliddon's. 
It is finishing with a grace and a repose. 

By the way, I spent a pretty afternoon the other 
day. It was a complete thing, one thing excepted : 
but — she's at Paris. I dined, I will not say how 

* As at Nando's. " What an eternal time that gentleman in black, at Nan- 
do's, keeps the paper 1 I am sick of hearing the waiters bawling out incessantly. 
•The Chronicle is in hand, sir.'" — Elia's Detached Thoughts on Book* and 
Reading. — • Ed. 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 257 

early ; but took only a couple glasses of wine ; which 
will retrieve my character on that point. I then made 
tour of the book-stalls, at Covent-Garden ; bought 
some comedies and a Catullus ; went to the theatre, 
and saw Der Frevschutz and Charles the Second ; re- 
issued from among the perukes, with a gallant sense 
about my head and shoulders, as if I carried one my- 
self; went and settled my faculties over a cup of the 
New Monthly atGliddon's ; got home by eleven (fori 
would not go to a party where she was not) ; and fell 
to sleep at the words " Lulling hope," in a song I am 
writing:. ' 1826. 



WIT MADE EASY, OR A HINT TO WORD- 
CATCHERS. 

A. Here comes B., the liveliest yet most tiresome 
of word-catchers. I wonder whether he'll have wit 
enough to hear good news of his mistress. Well, B., 
my dear boy, I hope I see you well. 

^. I hope you do, my dear A., otherv/ise you have 
lost your eyesight. 

A. Good. Well, how do you do.? 

^. How ? Why, as other people do. You would 
not have me eccentric, would you ? 

A. Nonsense. I mean how do you find yourself? 

^. Find myself. Where's the necessity of finding 
myself.? I have not been lost. 

A. Incorrigible dog ! Come now, to be serious. 

17 



258 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

{B. coijies closer to A, and looks very serious.) 

A. Well, what now? 

B. I am come to be serious. 

A. Come, now ; nonsense, B. ; leave off this. 
{^Laying his hand on his arm.) 

B {looki^ig down at his arui). I can't leave off 
this. It would look very absurd to go without a 
sleeve. 

A. Ah, ha ! You make me laugh, in spite of my- 
self. How's Jackson? 

B. The deuce ! How's Jackson ! Well, I never 
should have thought that. How can Howe be Jack- 
son? " Surname and arms," I suppose, of some rich 
uncle? I have not seen him gazetted? 

A. Good by. 

B. {^detaining hi?n) . " Good by 1 " What a sud- 
den enthusiasm in favor of some virtuous man of the 
name of By ! "Good by!" To think of Ashton 
standing at the corner of the street, doting aloud on 
the integrity of a Mr. By ! 

A. Ludicrous enough. I can't help laughing, I 
confess. But laughing does not always imply merri- 
ment. You do not delight us, Jack, with these sort 
of jokes, but tickle us ; and tickling may give pain. 

B. Don't accept it, then. You need not take 
everything that is given you. 

A. You'll want a straight-forward answer some 
day, and then — 

B. You'll describe a circle about me, before you 
give it. Well, that's your affair, not mine. You'll 
astonish the natives, that's all. 

A. It's great nonsense, you must allow. 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 259 

B. I can't see why it is greater nonsense than any 
other pronoun. 

A. {in despair). Well, it's of no use, I see. 

B. Excuse me : it is of the very greatest use. I 
don't know a part of speech more useful. It performs 
all the greatest offices of nature, and contains, in fact, 
the whole agency and mystery of the world. It rains. 
It is fine weather. It freezes. It thaws. It (which 
is very odd) is one o'clock. " It has been a very 
frequent observation." It goes. Here it goes. How 
goes it.-* — (wdiich, by the way, is a translation from 
the Latin Eo., is it ; Eo., I go ; is thou goest ; it, he or 
it goes." In short — 

A. In short, if I wanted a dissertation on it, now's 
the time for it. But I don't ; so good by. ( Going.) 
— I saw Miss ]M last night. 

B. The devil you did ! Where was it? 

A. {to himself). Now I have him, and will re- 
venge myself. Where was it, eh.? O, you must 
know a great deal more about it than I do ! 

B, Nay, my dear fellow, do tell me. I'm on 
thorns. 

A. On thorns ! very odd thorns. I never saw a 
thorn look so like a pavement. 

B. Come, now, to be serious. 

{A. comes close to B.^ and looks t?'ag-ic.) 
B. He, he ! very fair, egad. But do tell me where 
was she. How did she look? Who was with her? 

A. O, ho I Hoo was with her, was he.? Well, I 
wanted to know his name. I could not tell who the 
devil it was. But I say, Jack, who's Hoo.? 

B. Good. He, he ! Devilish fair ! But now, 



26o THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

my dear Will, for God's sake, you know how inter- 
ested I am. 

A. The deuce you are ! I always took you for a 
disinterested fellow. I always said of Jack B., Jack's 
apt to overdo his credit for wit ; but a more honest, 
disinterested fellow I never met with. 

^. Well, then, as you think so, be merciful. Where 
is Miss M ? 

A. This is more astonishing news than any. Ware 

is Miss M . I know her passion for music ; but 

this is wonderful. Good heavens ! To think of a 
delicate young lady dressing herself in man's clothes, 
and going about as a musician under the name of 
Ware. 

B. Now, my dear Will, consider. I acknowledge 
I have been tiresome ; I confess it is a bad habit, this 
word-catching ; but consider my love. 

{^A. falls into an attitude of musing.^ 
B. Well. 

A. Don't interrupt me. I am considering your 
love. 

B. I repent ; I am truly sorry. What shall I 
do? {^Laying his hand on his heart.) I'll give up 
this cursed habit. 

A. You will.^ Upon honor? 

B. Upon my honor. 

A. On the spot? 

B. Now, this instant. Now and forever ! 

A, Strip away, then. 

B. Strip ! For what? 

A. You said you'd give up that cursed habit. 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 261 

B. Now, my dear A., for the love of everything 
that is sacred, for the love of your own love. 

A, Well, you promise me sincerely ? 

B. Heart and soul ! 

A. Step over the way, then, into the coffee-house, 
and I'll tell you. 

Street Sweeper. Please, your honor, pray remem- 
ber the poor swape. 

B. My friend, I'll never forget you, if that will 
be of any service. I'll think of you next year. 

A, What, again .^ 

B. The last time, as I hope to be saved. Here, 
my friend, there's a shilling for you. Charity covers 
a multitude of bad jokes. 

Street Sweeper. God send your honor thousands 
of them. 

B. The jokes or the shillings, you rascal } 

Street Sweeper. Och, the shillings. Divil a bit 
the bad jokes. I can make them myself, and a shil- 
ling's no joke, anyhow. 

A. What? really silent.? and in spite of the dog's 
equivocal Irish face.? Come, B., I now see you can 
give up a jest, and art really in love ; and your mis- 
tress, I will undertake to say, will not be sorry to 
be convinced of both. Women like to begin with 
merriment well enough ; but they think ill of a man 
who cannot come to a grave conclusion. 
1825. 



262 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 



THE FENCIxXG-MASTER'S CHOICE. 

AS we have a great aversion to the repetition 
of old jokes, and in our ignorance of what 
is going forward in the festive parts of the town, 
can never be certain that any story we take for a 
new one is not well known, we always feel inclined 
to preface a relation of this kind with something 
that should serve for an apology in case of necessi- 
ty, or give it a new grace in default of newness of 
a better sort. And this reflection always reminds 
us of that pl-easant Milanese, whom nature made a 
wag and a jolly fellow, and Francis the First made 
a bishop ; to wit. Master Matthew Bandello, the 
best Italian novelist, after Boccaccio, and one who 
could tell a grave story as well as a merry one. 
Monsignore Matteo, before he proceeds to relate 
how '"'' a jealous enamoured himself" of a young 
widow, or how a pleasant " beff'"' was put upon a 
priest who became "furious of it," and "remained 
stordited," makes a point of informing the reader 
where he first heard the story, who told it, and in 
whose company, and how much better it was told 
than he, with his Lombardisms, can have any pre- 
tence to repeat it ; on all which accounts he wishes 
to God, that people could have heard it fresh from 
the lips of that very amiable and magnificent Sig- 
nor, the before-mentioned Signor Antonio, whom he 
recollects as if it was but yesterday, because he was 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 263 

standing at the time with a right joyous and gen- 
teel company by the balustrade of the gardens of 
the very illustrious and most adorned Signor, his 
singularly noble friend the Signor Gherardesco dei 
Gherardi, Conte di Cuviano, where there happened 
to be present the ladies equally eminent for their 
high birth and most excellent endowments, to wit, 
the right courteous, virtuous, and most beautiful la- 
dies the Lady Vittoria, Princess of Colombano, and 
the Lady Hippolita d'Este, widow of the most valor- 
ous and magnificent Signor, the ever-memorable Al- 
fonso, Prince of Ferrara ; which ladies, being very 
affectionate towards all argute sayings and witty deeds, 
did nigh burst themselves for laughter, in the which 
the very illustrious Signor Gherardesco aforesaid did 
heartily join, to the great contentment of that princely 
company, and all who overheard those urbane con- 
ceits and most graceful phrases, which he (the bishop) 
utterly despairs of rendering anything the like to the 
reader. But he will do his best; and as the story is 
exceedingly curious (to wit, a little free), he had ad- 
dressed it to the right virtuous and most adorned with 
all feminine dowries, the Lady Lucretia di San Don- 
nato, in return for one of a like nature which she was 
graciously pleased to relate to him one day ; to wit, on 
the eve of the day of Corpus Domini, sitting in the 
windows of the Palazzo Rospoli, at that time inhabit- 
ed by the very magnificent, most adorned, and most 
worthily given Signor, the Signor Prince Cesare Otto- 
boni, nephew of the most Holy Father. 

By this process, the reader feels bound to like the 
story, if only out of a proper sense of the company he 



264 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

is in, and the respect that is due to all those fair and 
magnificent names ; and then follows the novella^ or 
new tale, perhaps not at all new, and no longer than 
the one we are about to relate. 

We should like to call to ourselves an aid of this 
sort, and be able at the head of every one of our stories 
to state how it was told us by this person or that ; how 
that, sitting one day in the gardens of Kensington, at 
a time when the dust of the streets rendered an escape 
into those green and quiet places agreeable, we had 
the pleasure of hearing it from the lips of that very 
adorned and witty Mister, the Reverend Mister Sam- 
uel Smith, or the extremely magnificent and choice in 
his neckcloths, the admired Mr. Tomlinson ; or how, 
dining with the very magnificent and grave Esquire, 
the Squire Jinks, of Jinlcs Hall, it was related to usby 
the facetious and extremely skilled in languages, the 
bachelor of arts, the hopeful Dick Watts, cousin of 
the high born and most beautiful lady, the Lady Bar- 
bara Jinks, consort of the said esquire, who, being at 
that moment in the act of swallowing a cherry, was 
nigh to have thrown all the lovers of wit and elegance 
in those parts into mourning, in consequence of the 
extreme diflficulty she found in swallowing the fruit 
and the facetiosity at once. 

The story is this : that in the year of cur Lord one 
thousand seven hundred and ninety-nine, the celebrat- 
ed fencing -master. Monsieur de la Rue, being at that 
time fencing-master to the gentlemen of the University 
of Cambridge, and grievously tormented in his voca- 
tion by the said gentlemen, who made no end of mim- 
icking his grimaces, groaning out Df measure at his 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 265 

thrusts, not repenting at his remonstrances, and show- 
ing themselves otherwise insensible of the dignity and 
painstaking of his profession, did one day, towards 
the end of the month of June, the weather being hot, 
the said Monsieur de la Rue in his jacket and night- 
cap, and divers of the said gentlemen standing idly 
about, laughing and making a vain sport, instead of 
pinking him, as they ought to have done, — he, the 
said Monsieur de la Rue, did, I say, then and there sit 
down on the floor in the room in which he was fen- 
cing, and placing, one on each side of him, the two foils 
which he then happened to be holding in his hands, 
and being provoked out of the ordinary measure of 
his patience by the eternal gibes and ungrateful levi- 
ties of those his tormentors, the said gentlemen, was 
moved to utter the following speech, or represen- 
tation expostulatory ; which he did with great passion 
and vehemence, his eyes wide open, his hands and 
face trembling, and emphasis rising at every sen- 
tence : — 

*' Jentlemens, — 

" If Got Almaighty — vere to come down from Jiev- 
ven^ — and vere to say to me, ' Monsieur de la Rue^ 

— vill you be fencing-master at Osford or Cambreege, 

— or vill you be etairnally dam? ' — 
" I should answer and say, — 

" ' Sare, — if it is all the same to you, — I vill be 

ETAIRNALI.Y dam/ " 

IS28. 



266 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 



TWILIGHT ACCUSED AND DEFENDED. 

A MONSTROUS thing has happened. Here is 
a correspondent of ours, and a pleasant one too, 
and witty withal, aiming a blow at our gentle friend, 
Twilight ! What possible mood could he liave been 
in? Did he expect a friend who had disappointed 
him? or a new book? or a letter? Was his last bot- 
tle of wine out? Or did he want his tea? Or was 
he reading and could not go on, the servant not being 
in the way to bring candles? Or was the evening 
rainy? Or had he said anything wrong to any one 
else, and so was out of temper? Or had he been 
reading something about twilight, badly written, a 
" twaddle," and so was disposed to go to an extreme 
the other way, and be perverse in his wit? His first 
verse looks like it. Or had he a toothache? or a 
headache? or nothing to do? Or had his fire gone 
out? 

We should almost as soon have expected a blow 
from him at gentleness itself, as at our gentle dusk 
friend, the mildest and most unpresuming of the 
Hours, meek, yet genial withal, like some loving Mes- 
tiza^ or Quadroon, something between fair and dark, 
or dusk and dusker, who, by her sweet middle tone 
between merit and the want of pretension, and by 
having nothing to arrogate, and much to be prized, 
charms the amorous heart of some contemplative 
West Indian, who is tired out between the flare of 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 267 

his whiter favorites, and the iindiscerning presump- 
tion of his black. Certain it is, that, vehemently 
howsoever he speaketh, we hold him not to be in 
earnest (the less so by reason of that enormity) ; 
but, in order to prevent the peril of any false con- 
clusions, in minds accustomed not to such facetious 
perversity, and still more to take the opportunity of 
vindicating the character of our' gentle friend, and 
make our correspondent remorseful the next- time 
he sees her (for having even appeared to treat her 
ill), we have thought it incumbent upon us to fol- 
low up his hard v/ords with others more fitly soft 
and overwhelmingly balmy. O, there is nothing like 
defending a good easy cause, and a tender-hearted 
client ! It makes one, somehow, so sure of triumph, 
so able to trample on one's enemy with the softest 
foot and the most generous reputation — so gifted 
(dare we say it?) with the pleasure of malignity by 
the very exercise of benevolence. Mark you, dear 
reader, with what a tender savageness we will set 
him down. Yet he rails in good set terms. There 
is no denying that. Far be it from us to deny it, 
who shall only gain the greater praise from our ref- 
utation. Hear him how he sets out with the ingen- 
ious impudence of his pun and his alliteration : — 



A TRIMMING FOR TWILIGHT. 

How I despise the twaddle about twilight. 
That most unserviceable sort of sky-light ; 
Weak, wavering gleam, that, wending on its way 
Towards the night, still lingers with the day. 



268 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

Twilight's a half-and-half affair, that would 
With all its heart be moonlight if it could ; 
Dim, but not dark ; you pause at the bell handles ; 
, 'Tis scarce worth while to conquer it with candles. 

Twilight is eve grown gray before its time, 
Mystified mummer, aping the sublime . 

Day with its eye half closed, and half a-peep ; 
The afternoon, making believe to sleep. 

'Tis like that forming frown yet undefined 
That yon half-smiling female face has got, 
As though it hadn't quite made up its mind 
Whether it should look angrily or not. 

Twilight's an interloper in the sky ; 
The face of nature painted with one eye : 
Something between blank darkness and broad light, 
Like dotard day coquetting with young night. 

A dame passe, who, growing old and wan, 
Affects to veil the charms she feels are gone ; 
Knowing her day is o'er, the wily jade 
Inwraps the ruin where the sunshine play'd. 

Lovers love twilight, but I'm not a lover ; 
And why f/tey love it I could ne'er discover ; 
For light is passion's parent : do ye deem 
Beauty no debtor to the radiant beam 
That lamps its loveliness ; say, can we know 
That beauty lives, and one bright glance forego ? 
Or, is't a fancy of love's selfish art, 
To close the eyes, and see but with the heart? 

Haply 'tis so ; in love's delirious trance. 
The raptured soul, grown jealous of the glance 
That has a joy beyond it, dims the light 
To lend to young imagination sight. 

Fancy, that peoples darkness with bright rays, 
And makes a darkness that it thus may gaze : 
How is't that ^z/^rj/ feehng, fond, intense, 
Tempts us to lose a while our visual sense? 

Is it superfluous ? We drink love through it ; 
'Tis then in us ; we can no longer view it 
By gazing outwards ; now, a glance to win, 
Our eyelids close, and turn their sense within. 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 269 

This is digressive, b.ut enough for nie ; 

Lovers, in fact, are no authority' ; 

So, as I said at first, old twaddling twilight, 

Be still the lover's gleam, you shan't be my light. 

Thou'rt day declared a bankrupt, offering round 
A dividend of ten-pence in the pound : 
Plague take such compositions; I'll for one 
Have twenty shillings' worth of Ught or none. 

Not daybreak, but day broken ; light fades fast ; 
Do as thou wilt, thou'rt sure to fail at last. 
" Come, sealing night," before thee twilight flies ; 
Put out the mocker with your starry eyes. 
Dusky-hued coward ! hast begun the race, 
Dar'st thou not look Dame Dian in the face? 

Now flickering fainter, now more darkly dull, 
" I, that am cruel, am yet merciful ; 
I would not have thee linger in thy pain : " 
Come, light the candles ; struggle not, — 'tis vain. 

Is that thy shadow, lingering on the moor ? 

No matter ; you shall never come in-door. 

The stars come out at thee, pale day-diminisher ; 

Now the moon gleams at full, — ay, that' s a finisher. 

Beneath the hillock's shadow, cloaked in gray. 
Cautiously creep before the light away ; 
But when the morning moon grows sick and pale, 
Then, stealthy stepper, come across the vale. 

Child of the mist, isthmus 'twixt light and shade 1 
Shadow of Chaos, from which earth was made 1 
Day dying of decline ! doubt-dreaming ray 1 
Thy presence saddens me — away — away ! 

W. L. R. 

" Away — away ! " Our correspondent must have 
been in a great hurry, to speak thus to the poor gentle 
twihght, which has not a w^ord to say for itself, unless 
it be the muftin-bell, the next thing in humbleness of 
sound to the sheep-bell. We take him to be a prodi- 
giously active and eager spirit, with an ultra flow of 
health and life, and never easy but when occupied, 



270 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

perhaps not then, unless the occupation perfectly suits 
him. But he has a soul withal ; you may know it 
even by what is implied in his style of abuse ; and 
therefore it is not the twilight he hates, but the ab- 
sence of something which he wanted instead of it. 
Yes; assuredly he has been "snubbing" the poor 
Qiiadroon, like some lordly planter, because some- 
body else has not brought him his sangaree. 

He lets — we cannot say the " cat out of the bag " 
— but the dove out of the cage — in what he says 
about lovers. He tells us he is " no lover," merely in 
order to avoid what he knows to be conclusive against 
him ; and, in fact, he runs into a digression about love, 
on purpose to disprove his own argument. Besides, 
if he happens to be so limited or so unlucky in his 
circle of acquaintances as to be in love with nobody, 
he must love all sorts of lovable things, otherwise 
how could he write so well about loving? and if a 
man loves anything at all, he must needs love so mild 
and loving a thing as the twilight. (Here are a great 
many repetitions of the word " love ; " but it is a 
pleasant note, and will bear reiteration like the night- 
ingale's.) 

Furthermore, in this passage of our correspondent's 
about love, compared with certain letters which he 
has written to us privately, urging us to give an arti- 
cle on Coleridge, we have detected him in the fact of 
his disingenuousness ; for this very passage has mani- 
festly been suggested by some stanzas of that favorite 
of his, in the poem entitled the Day-Dream. It is a 
lover's picture of twilight in a room, and is so beauti- 
ful and true, that it might serve alone, as an answer 
to all the stanzas of this pretending rogue : — 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 27I 

" My eyes make pictures, when they are shut : — 
I see a fountain, large and fair, 
A willow and a ruined hut, 

And thee, and me, and Mary there. 

Mary ! make thy gentle lap our pillow ! 

Bend o'er us, like a bovver, my beautiful green willow ! 

******* 
The shadows dance upon the wall. 

By the still dancing iirc-flames made ; 
And now they slumber, moveless all ! 

And now they melt to one deep shade ! 
But not from me shall this mild darkness steal thee ; 

1 dream thee with mine eyes, and at my heart I feel thee ! " 

Very beautiful and spiritual, and truly loving. But 
lovers, the most honorable and delicate, have a trick 
of taking other advantages of the good-natured twi- 
light ; and the poet goes on to let us know as much : — 

"Thine eyelash on ray cheek doth play." 

Far be it from us to deny the merits of light and see- 
ing. Beauty was surely meant to be seen as well as 
loved, or why is it so beautiful.^ But it is a maxim 
with us never to deny the merits of one good thing 
because there is another ; and twilight, where love is, 
has its loveliness also, as well as lamp and daylight. 
One of the greatest tests of true love is the sense of 
joy imparted by the mere presence of the beloved 
object, apart from light, speech, or anything else ; and 
twilight, somehow, rewards us for the sincerity and 
generosity of this feeling, by bringing us nearer to the 
object of our affection, in its abolition of interme- 
diate objects, and a general sense of its mild embrace- 
ment. 

Come — let us consider what our correspondent 
w^ould say further in behalf of the twilight, if he 



272 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

were in the humor for it. We wish we had time to 
say it in verse ; but here we heave a great sigh (one 
of the sighs of our Hfe) ; and as we always feel 
ashamed of sighing in the midst of this beautiful 
creation (of which to be able to discern a millionth 
part of the beauties, is to waken up as many con- 
solatory angels, who lie in wait to become visible to 
loving eyes), we shall proceed to express ourselves 
in our accustomed prose, from which, at all events, 
the love of what is poetical cannot be excluded. 

TwJlio^ht is the time between li^ht and darkness, 
when the facility aObrded for action by the daylight 
is over, and the aid of candle-light, for the renewal 
of action, aw^aits our pleasure to renew it or not. 
It is therefore the precise time, of all others, vvhich 
seems designed by nature for meditation. We say, 
by nature ; for though we hold it to be man's nature 
to be artificial as well as natural, yet it is natural 
for him, being a thinking being, to "take pause;" 
and nature, in this gentlest and most intermediate 
hour, seems to offer it him. The greatest part of 
his duty is over (we hold, that in a more civilized 
state of society it will all be over, except for pur- 
poses of entertainment) ; he cannot see to work ; he 
cannot see to travel very actively ; his very book be- 
gins to fail him, unless he has determined to keep up 
the train of his reading, and goes nearer and nearer 
to the window, and at last he must give it up. He 
is therefore thrown upon his meditations. 

Now " think a little." 

Not of your cares, dear reader, if you can help it ; not 
of your work ; not of other people's faults ; not of your 



ESSAYS AXD SKETCHES. 



273 



own. There is time enough to attend to those, when 
we have more light — unless, indeed, you do it in great 
charity, first towards the faults of others, and then 
towards yourself (having earned the right), and al- 
ways provided you end, as indeed you must, if true 
charity meditates with you, in resolutions befitting 
the mildness and considerateness of the hour. We 
would not even have you think of the sufferingfs of 
others, provided you think of them at any other 
time, and do what you can to help them. Twi- 
light is a placid hour, and you must entertain it 
with placidity or not at all. You must have so 
acted, or so wished to act, at other times, as to be 
able to give gentle welcome to gentle guest. You 
must be worthy of the twilight. 

(Here our correspondent gives a great wince ; and 
begins to inquire of his conscience, whether he has 
ever cracked any one's skull, or written any im- 
piety except the above.) 

Now let us think of all mild and lovingr thinsfs — 
of our childhood, of the fields, of our best friends, 
of twilight itself and its shadows, of the quiet of 
our fireside, and the fanciful things we see in the 
glowing coals, of the poets who have spoken of 
evening, of the beauty of stillness, of scenes of rural 
comfort, of the travels of the winds and clouds, of 
stories of good angels, nay, of dear friends whom 
we have lost, provided we have lost them long 
enough or loved them well enoujfh to consider them 
with reference to the beauty of their own spirit 
rather than to their absence from ourselves. Per- 
haps they are commissioned to be good angels over 
18 



274 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

US : — perhaps they are now this minute in the room, 
smiling in the certainty of their own lovingness, and 
the knowledge of our future good ; a}-, and (as far as 
their sympathy with our present struggles will per- 
mit) smiling to think even how startled we should be 
to see them, if it were within Heaven's knowledge of 
what is best for us that we should do so. For God is 
the author of mirth as well as seriousness, and consid- 
ering what security of belief in good there must be in 
celestial natures, we may conceive some little stoop- 
ing to it even in the happiness of heav'enly cheeks. 

'' Let us think " of that, and of all other possibilities 
beyond the regions of mere earthly utility, not except- 
ing it nevertheless. It is the privilege of the imagina- 
tive, that they include everything which is good, besides 
seeing a germ of it at the core of the thorniest evil. 

We put these words, '^ let us think," within marks 
of quotation, for a reason very proper to mention in 
this place ; for we scarcely ever begin meditating at 
twiligfht without callino^ them to mind as uttered to 
us by the beloved parent to whom we are indebted for 
most of our aspirations after anything useful or beau- 
tiful. She would say to us sometimes at this hour, 
when our spirits appeared to her to be a little too in- 
cessant, " Come — let us think a little." And then 
we used to sit down on a stool at her side, and look 
at the fire, and be led into a sedate mood by some 
story she woidd tell us of her own mother, or of the 
sea, or of some great and good people of old. 

So now this is good hushing time, is it not, reader.? 
and fit for keeping a little from the candles ; and not 
what our ultra lively friend (now growing remorseful) 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 375 

would make of it. You and we are sitting on each 
side of the fireplace, one of us with a knee between 
his hands, the other with a child between his knees, 
and there is a fair friend with us, and we are all as 
quiet as mice, our faces lit up by the fire, and our 
shadows shifting on the wall. When we speak, it is in 
a low voice ; for twilight has this also in common with 
the sweetest of its friends : — 

" Its voice is ever soft, gentle and low — 
An excellent thing in Twilight." 

W. L. R. shall come in among us, if he is " very 
good." 

W. L. R. You see before you, sir, a penitent. 

Writer. I see before me a suspicious quoter of 
impudent plays. 

W. L. R. I appeal to the lady's face, sir. 

Writer. O, you're a very cunning appellant, sir, 
and the lady's face will get you a pardon for anything. 
— There — don't tumble over the little boy. But 
with what face you can come in, after saying you are 
" no lover " — 

W. L. R. Excuse me. Whatever I might have 
said before, real or pretended, and whatever new pre- 
sumption I may be guilty of now, nobody can look 
on this lady's face without — 

Writer. Hush, hush ; not so very loud and enthu- 
siastic. {All lai/or/i.) You see how little he was in 
earnest. The moment he hears of a comfortable party 
and a charming woman, he is for being in the midst 
of it, twilight and all, — Come, as we are Christian 
people, we will give him, by way of penance, what 
shall be no penance at all. He shall recite to us Cole- 



276 



THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 



ridge's poem, entitled Frost at Midnight. There 
is mention in it of a fireside and of the little fluttering 
film on the bars before us ; and the spirit of the whole 
piece is suited to the occasion, quiet, reflective, and 
universal. The last line is the perfection of ideal 
sympathy. 

IV. L. R. (Suppressing the vehemence of his en- 
thusiasm, in order to recite with a gentleness fitted to 
the lines, and gradually growing softer and more sea- 
sonable, till nothing can be better given.) 

FROST AT MIDNIGHT. 

The frost performs its secret ministry, 
Unhelped by any wind. The owlet's cry 
Came loud — and hark, again ! loud as before. 
The inmates of my cottage, all at rest, 
Have left me to that solitude, which suits 
Abstruser musings : save that at my side 
My cradled infant slumbers peacefully. 
'Tis calm indeed ! so calm, that it disturbs 
And vexes meditation with its strange 
And extreme silentness. Sea, hill, and wood, 
This populous village '. Sea, and hill, and wood, 
With all the numberless goings on of life, 
Inaudible as dreams ! the thin blue flame 
Lies on my low-burnt fire, and quivers not ; 
Only that film, which fluttered on the grate, 
Still flutters there, the sole unquiet thing. 
Methinks, its motion in this hush of nature 
Gives it dim sympathies with me who live, 
Making it a companionable form, 
Whose puny flaps and freaks the idling spirit 
By its own moods interprets, everywhere 
Echo or mirror seeking of itself, 
And makes a toy of thought. 

But O ! how oft. 

How oft, at school, with most believing mind, 

Presageful, have I gazed upon the bars. 

To watch that fluttering stranger 1 and as oft 

With unclosed lids, already had I dreamt 

Of my sweet birth-place, and the old church-tower, 



1834. 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 277 

Whose bells, the poor man's only music, rang 
From morn to evening, all the hot Fair-day, 
So sweetly, that they stirred and haunted me 
With a wild pleasure, falling on mine ear 
Most like articulate sounds of things to come ! 
So gazed I, till the soothing things I dreamt 
Lulled me to sleep, and sleep prolonged my dreams ! 
And so I brooded all the following morn, 
Awed by the stern preceptor's face, mine eye 
Fixed with mock study on my swimming book: 
Save if the door half opened, and I snatched 
A hasty glance, and still my heart leaped up, 
For still I hoped to see the stranger's face, 
Townsman, or aunt, or sister more beloved, 
My playnaate when we both were clothed alike ! 
Dear babe, that sleepest cradled by my side, 
Whose gentle breathings, heard in this deep calm, 
Fill up the interspersed vacancies 
And momentary pauses of the thought : 
My babe so beautiful ! it thrills my heart 
With tender gladness, thus to look at thee, 
And think that thou shalt learn far other lore 
And in far other scenes ! For I was reared 
In the great city, pent 'mid cloisters dim. 
And saw nought lovely but the sky and stars. 
But thou, my babe '. shalt wander like a breeze 
By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags 
Of ancient mountain, and beneath the clouds, 
Which image in their bulk both lakes and shores 
And mountain crags : so shalt thou see and hear 
The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible 
Of that eternal language, which thy God 
Utters, who from eternity doth teach 
Himself in all, and all things in himself. 
Great universal Teacher ! he shall mould 
Thy spirit, and by giving make it ask. 

Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee, 
Whether the summer clothe the general earth 
With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing 
Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch 
Of mossy apple-tree, while the nigh thatch 
Smokes in the sun-thaw : whether the eavedrops fall, 
Heard only in the trances of the blast, 
Or if the secret ministry of frost 

Shall hang them up in silent icicles, 

Quietly shining to the quiet moon. 



278 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 



TABLE WITS.— A BREAKFAST. 

IT is expected, we understand, that we shall begin 
our second volume * with something very pi- 
quant. This is an awful announcement. To be 
called upon for a bon-mot is embarrassing. To be ex- 
pected to be amusing for eight good octavo pages, is 
at least equal to calling upon a man for half an hour's 
much interesting chat, all on his own side. Then 
there is the sensation which singers have, when they 
are told that the company are " all attention." 

Some persons, when they expect you to be witty, 
do not even reconcile the announcement by an implied 
compliment. They look upon it as all in the way of 
business. As a baker has his hot rolls by eight 
o'clock, so an author, they think, is to have his essays. 
Twopenny loaves are the trade of one ; twopenny In- 
dicators of the other. The same expense of the facul- 
ties is supposed to go to the making of either. The 
printer composes for his bread ; so does the author. 
The cook melts down another animal's brains with 
great equanimity ; the author, of course, likewise. 

As we are to be full of good things in our present 
number, we take a refuge very common to those who 
have no better, and invite the reader to discuss (a 
word, by the by, of much injured metaphorical com- 
monplace, which we hereby restore to its ingenuity) f 

* Of that pleasant little periodical, The Indicator. — Ed. 

t "Table and conversation interchange their metaphors," says Hunt, in his 
Table-Talk. " We devour wit and argument, and discuss a turkey and chine." 
-Ed. 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 279 

some rolls and ham with us. It is astonishing what 
good company a gentleman can make himself by 
means of this kind. A breakfast maybe eloquent; 
a dinner is sure to be so. The very decanting of his 
wine shall " discourse excellent music " for him. His 
good things are all of the best, substartial, and intel- 
ligible. He is solid over his beef. His jeii cV esprit 
is a bottle of soda. "A leetle more of the sounds.^ " 
— ''a leetle stewed lobster?" — "a leetle more lemon 
to the currie ? '* — " some stuffing ? " — " more grouse ? " 
"let me recommend this blanc-mange — this cream 
pancake — this custard with your tart — these brandy 
apricots — these olives — a devil — hah ! (smacking 
his lips) this is the old wine I told you of, sure 
enough :" — phrases of this kind, judiciously admin- 
istered, shall outrival twice as many bon-mots. They 
shall produce a profound sensation, — an absolute 
severity of satisfaction. We have known a gentle- 
man, remarkable for a certain festive taciturnity, sit 
at the head of his table ; and, by dint of these com- 
mendatory syllables, united to the reputation of know- 
ing more than he said, make a wit feel doubtful of 
the merit of being facetious, and fearful how he in- 
terrupted so intense a conviviality. 

And here (before the rolls come up) we may notice 
a compromising kind of it, which would see fair play 
between ideas and no ideas, and might be imitated to 
advantage by those who would willingly say some- 
thing and yet nothing. Polite conversation, as de- 
tailed by Swift, has had its day ; so that if the genteel 
have no new novel or scandal to discourse of, they will 
rather say nothing than not appear knowing or liter- 



-ZSO THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

ary. The jokes about " my Lord Mayor's fool," and 
*' none the better for seeing you," and " Tom, how is 
it you can't see the wood for trees," have been super- 
seded by the periodical publications. Now the wit- 
tockwe speak of (to use a Scotch diminutive) is akin 
to punning, inasmuch as it plays upon words ; so that 
at any rate, some verbal knowledge is requisite for 
those who handle it ; and herein the advantage pro- 
posed to the dining circles is evident. It is practised 
with great applause by a friend of ours, and may be 
called the Art of Translating a Language into itself. 
Thus, to break, signifying also to fracture, and fast, 
being, in one sense, the same as rapid, the wag in 
question calls breakfasting, Fracturing one's Rapid. 
Cold mutton he translates into Frigid Sheep. Foreign 
pickle is Peregrine Pickle. Some bacon is a Piece 
of the Viscount St. Albans ; — or in removing bacon 
for some other dish, he recommends you to put it 

" Nigh where the goodly Verulam stood of yore." 

Greens are Verdants, and as verd means green, and 
green means inexperienced, and ants has a sound like 
aunts, he calls them, by a diffuser version. Inexperi- 
enced Sisters of one's Father. Pulling the bell, is 
Romping with the Beauty ; and bringing up the urn. 
Educating the Sarcophagus. There is eminent au- 
thority for this kind of translation into other lan- 
guages, — as the Latin conversion, attributed to Dr. 
Johnson, of a tea chest into the second person singu- 
lar of the verb doceo, to teach ; and Hogarth's epis- 
tolary drawing, inviting a friend, in three Greek 
letters, to Eta Beta Pi. But our friend contrives to 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 28 1 

be learned, while adhering to his own language, and 
pours forth a profusion of synonymous trifling, which 
we, of all persons, shall certainly not quarrel wdth, 
seeing that he does it out of the delight of escaping 
from his studies, and feeling his kindred or his friends 
about him. We were much pleased the other day, 
for his sake, in hearing of an eminent living philoso- 
pher of our acquaintance who, in the midst of his 
white locks, still retains his love of verbal joking, and 
delights to help his young companions to a jest as 
well as some soup. He lets, in particular, his politi- 
cal spleen take breath by it. One dish, which he is 
fondest of cutting up, he calls after such and such a 
statesman. He shakes his head at another, and says 
there is too much High Church in it. To your veal 
he recommends a squeeze of the judge. 

An old schoolfellow of ours, with whom we used to 
breakfast, in high glee, in a study four feet square, 
possesses, almost beyond any man we ever met with, 
this talent of converting one idea into another, and 
being equally merry in his mirth and his gravity. We 
remember the irresistible effect which his reception 
of a beating from the master used to have upon us 
all. His gesticulations of agony were so abrupt, 
varied, and extravagant, that the master and the boys 
used to be equally perplexed, — the latter how to 
keep themselves from laughing out loud, and the 
former whether to take it as something extremely 
wretched or contemptuous. Either expression was 
equally unusual in a school so well attempered as ours. 
He was found out at last, and compelled to take 
care of his jokes. His gravity, however, was mider 



282 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

suspicion to the last. When the master was about 
to retire from his office, he received, for an exercise, 
a set of Latin verses from him, in which there was a 
pathetic adieu, apostrophizing him under the title of 
" Reverende Magister." The old gentleman, not 
much accustomed to the melting mood at any time, or 
to the dry one often, turned round to him with a face 
of ludicrous gratitude, and said, " Thank ye, P." He 
used to perplex him also, as well as us all, by taking 
advantage of a permission we had of being facetious 
in verse-making, and giving up the most extravagant 
versions of English nursery songs, such as Jack and 
Gill, and When I was a Bachelor. Like all young 
wits who are scholars, he liked to give ludicrous dig- 
nity to commonplaces by the gravity of a learned 
language. He kept his tea and sugar memorandums 
in Latin ; used to call out for the boy who kept a 
door, under the title of Janitor Aulae ; and gave us a 
little pocket edition of Buchanan, which we have now 
by us, as a pledge and MONUMENT of his friend- 
ship, — " Pignus et monumentum." He said of a 
fellow-wag, who was accustomed to exaggerate, 
" When so and so relates a story, you must multiply 
by hundreds, divide by thousands, and make allow- 
ance in the quotient for Oriental grandeur." The 
same spirit accompanied him to college, where, it is 
understood, he might have got what classical honors 
he pleased, had not the gravity of his answers at exam- 
ination been questionable. Lie then went into orders, 
and became remarkable for the dignit}^ of his voice and 
manner in the pulpit, while he retained all the jocose 
part of his character among his friends. " What words" 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 283 

(literally) " have we not heard at the Mermaid?" — ■ 
No man ever got up a little festive meeting with a more 
orthodox grace. If port was not liked by an}^ one, he 
found a bottle of claret by his plate ; and we shall 
always retain a grateful recollection of his olives. It 
is a fault sometimes found with wits, and justly, that 
their animal spirits carry them away from a proper 
attentiveness to others. This never was his case. He 
had a handsome faculty, not only of being pleasant 
himself, but of extracting all that could be got out of 
others. To strangers he would sometimes be more dis- 
concerting, like Swift ; to whom, by the way, he bore 
some resemblance, if the Dean's picture in Sharpens 
edition of the Spectator is a good likeness. He turned 
round once upon a man in Holborn, and asked him, 
with an air of zealous appeal, whether he had ever 
injured his wife and family ; upon which the aston- 
ished passenger declaring he had not, " Then, sir," 
said he, '• I will thank you, another time, not to tread 
my shoe down at heel." There was a huge fellow 
one evening making a great noise in a coffee-house, 
about a prize ox he had seen. " I have heard of the 
carcass," says P. " The carcass ! " cries the other, with 
a sort of triumph of knowledge: — "it's alive, sir; 
iVs alive ; and live bodies are not called carcasses." 
" Good," says the other, looking at him, "but I presume 
they may deserve the name." He said this with so indif- 
ferent and yet so particular an air, that neither the man 
could be offended nor the company refrain from laugh- 
ing. At another time, being in the cider cellar in 
Maiden Lane, and one of our party having said some- 
thing in Latin, without the least intention of being 



284 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

overheard, a military gentleman, somewhat irritable 
with having more wine than wit, said out loud, that 
he did not conceive a public room a fit place to talk 
Latin in. We forget what our schoolfellow said to 
this : but in consequence of his enlisting the com- 
pany on our side with his jokes, the captain pro- 
posed to give him his address. " Sir," says P., with 
great gravity, " you need not trouble yourself with a 
specimen : I never had any doubt of your being a 
man of address." " Sir," returned the captain more 
vehemently, his voice a little titubating with wine — 
"You will not — then — take my address?" " O, 
excuse me, sir," replied the other, " I do take it in- 
finitely ; and all the rest of us take it." By this time 
the amusement of the audience had much increased. 
" Sir ! " repeated the officer, half rising from his seat, 
and tumbling a little towards him, with pipe in hand, 
and angry wonder in his eye, — " I say, sir, — do you 
mean to say, sir, — you know what I mean — I mean to 
say, sir, I'll give you my address ; that's what I mean." 
" But, sir," retorted our inflexible companion, " you 
must allow me to say that your liberality is really 
superfluous ; since, to confess the truth, I really don't 
at all approve of your address." At this the tottering 
man (who, you -might see by his face was good-hu- 
mored enough, and worth being parried in this way 
by a gentleman) staggered up to his antagonist, and 
held out his hand to him, declaring he was one of the 
pleasantest fellows he ever met with in the whole 
course of his life, and nothing should induce him to 
quarrel with him. 

We do not profess any practical science in meals. 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 285 

Those who do will despise us at once, when they hear 
that we prefer breakfast and tea to dinner, and that 
by breakfast, we mean a very common one." * But we 
know what belongs to a meal. There was a lay- 
schoolfellow of ours, who was always proposing to 
treat some of us at a tavern ; though he never did. 
He contented himself with casting up what he called 
" the damages." He used to cry out on a sudden, 
" It doesn't signify talking, but we will have that din- 
ner I spoke of this afternoon. Come, now ; I'm seri- 
ous. Let us see what will be the damages?" He 
would then take pen, ink, and paper, and f^ill to mak- 
ing out a grave list of fish, flesh, and tart ; till the 
exceeding wish to realize it, almost made dupes of 
our cloistered imaginations for the seventh time. The 
worst of it was, that he himself used to go home and 
feast on what he had been speaking of; while we 
were rung up in the hall, and dined like the monks of 
La Trappe. We shall reverse the spirit of this va- 
gary. Our breakfast will be upon paper, but our 
readers shall have more than we are in the habit of 
seeing on our table. Students are at once tempted to 
exceed, and obliged to be temperate. The exhaustion 
of their faculties excites them to indulge a morbid ap- 
petite ; while the delicacy of stomach produced by 
that exhaustion, makes them cautious how they ren- 
der it greater next time. 

What shall we say then? For " it does not signify 



* " It seems," says Fuller, in speaking of the ravens that brought Elijah 
bread and flesh in the morning and evening, "it seems dinners are but innova- 
tions, whilst breakfasts and suppers are men's most ancient and natural meals." 
— A Pisgak Sight of Palestine^ chapter 3, paragraph 17. — Ed. 



286 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

talking." We will have the breakfast he spoke of. 
And here it is, ready laid. Imprimis, tea and coiTee ; 
secondly, dry toast; thirdly, butter; fourthly, eggs ; 
fifthly, ham ; sixthly, something potted ; seventhly^ 
bread, salt, mustard, knives and forks, &c. One of the 
first things that belong to a breakfast is a good fiire. 
There is a delightful mixture of the lively and the 
snug in coming down into one's breakfast-room of a 
cold morning, and seeing everything prepared for us ; 
a blazing grate, a clean table-cloth and tea things, the 
newly-washed faces and combed heads of a set of 
good-humored urchins, and the sole empty chair at 
its accustomed corner, ready for occupation. When 
we lived alone, we could not help reading at meals : 
and it is certainly a delicious thing to resume an enter- 
taining book at a particularly interesting passage, 
with a hot cup of tea at one's elbow, and a piece of 
buttered toast in one's hand. The first look at the 
page, accompanied by a coexistent bite of the toast, 
comes under the head of intensities. But when in 
company, unless it is of a very private and pardoning 
description, it is, of course, not to be done, unless all 
read ; and a general reading in company is a sort of 
understood talking. The most allowable perusal is 
that of a newspaper. It involves a common interest, 
and is in itself a very sufficing and matutine thing. But 
we have enlarged on the pleasure of a breakfast pa- 
per elsewhere, in an article entitled A Day by the 
Fire ; which, by the way, will prevent us from in- 
dulging ourselves in other particulars appertaining to 
the present subject. We have it not by us, nor are 
we aware that we have before mentioned what we are 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 287 

going to notice : but we wish to observe, that ladies, 
alwaj^s delightful, and not the least so in their un- 
dress, are apt to deprive themselves of some of their 
best morning beams by appearing with their hair in 
papers. We give notice that essayists, and of course 
all people of taste, prefer a cap, if there must be any- 
thing : but hair, a million times over. To see grapes 
in paper bags is bad enough, but the rich locks of a 
lady in papers, the roots of the hair twisted up like a 
drummer's, and the forehead staring bald instead of 
being gracefully tendrilled and shadowed ! — it is a 
capital offence, — a defiance to the love and admira- 
tion of the other sex, — a provocative to a paper war : 
and we here accordingly declare the said war on 
paper, not having any ladies at hand to carry it at 
once into their headquarters. We must allow, at the 
same time, that they are very shy of being seen in 
this condition, knowing well enough how much of 
their strength, like Samson's, lies in that gifted orna- 
ment. We have known a whole parlor of them flut- 
ter off", like a dovecot, at the sight of a friend coming 
up the garden. 

But to return to our table. Ham is a good thing, 
but it is apt to fever our sedentary notions. We 
prefer cracking the round end of an egg with the 
back of a silver spoon, — not a horn spoon, whicli 
is flimsy and inefficient. A judicious jerk of the 
former upon a good, fair, dome-like shell issuing 
out of the egg cup, maketh a pretty result to the 
sensations. We cannot, in conscience, recommend 
hot buttered toast ; but it is a pleasing guilt. The 
best adventure to which it can give rise, is when you 



288 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

have modestly taken one of the outside pieces, and 
find your gentihty rewarded by carrying off the whole 
of the crumb part of the inner one, the crust of which 
has been detached. Chocolate has a nutty taste, but 
is heavy. Coffee is heating, but has a fine, serious 
flavor in it, if well done. You seem to taste the color 
of it. We used to prefer it at all times, but tea has 
become preferable to the meditative state of our di- 
gestion. How the Chinese came to invent it, as San- 
cho would say, we do not know : but it is the most 
ingenious, humane, and poetical of their discoveries. 
It is their epic poem 1820. 



GOING TO THE PLAY AGAIN. 

WITH the exception of Oberon, we have not 
witnessed a theatrical performance till the 
other night for these six or seven years. Fortune 
took us another way ; and when we had the opportu- 
nity we did not dare to begin again, lest our old 
friends should beguile us. We mention the circum- 
stance, partly to account for the notice we shall take 
of many things which appear to have gone by ; and 
partly out of a communicativeness of temper, suitable 
to a Companion. For the reader must never lose 
sight of our claims to that title. On ordinary occa- 
sions, he must remember that we are discussing mor- 
als or mince-pie v/ith him ; on political ones, reading 
the newspaper with him ; and in the present instance, 
we are sitting together in the pit (the ancient seat of 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 289 

criticism), seeing w7io is who in the play-bill, and 
hearing the delicious discord of the tuning of instru- 
ments, — the precursor of harmony. If our compan- 
ion is an old gentleman, we take a pinch of his snuff, 
and lament the loss of Bannister and Mrs. Jordan. 
Toothache and his nephew occupy also a portion of 
our remark ; and we cough with an air of authority. 
If he is a young gentleman, we speak of Vestris and 
Miss Foote ; wonder whether little Goward will show 
herself improving to-night ; denounce the absurdity 
of somebody's boots, or his bad taste in beauty ; and 
are loud in deprecating the fellows who talk loudly 
behind ns. Finally, if a lady, we bend with delight 
to hear the remarks she is making, "far above" criti- 
cism ; and to see the finer ones in her eyes. We 
criticise the ladies in the boxes ; and the more she 
admires them, the more we find herself the lovelier. 
May we add, that ladies in the pit, this cold weather, 
hav« still more attractions than usual ; and that it is 
cruel to find ourselves sitting, as we did the other 
night, behind two of them, when we ought to have 
been in the middle, partaking of the genial influence 
of their cloaks, their comfortable sides, and their con- 
versation? \ye were going to say, that we hope this 
is not too daring a remark for a Companion: — but 
far be it from us to apologize for anything so proper. 
Don't we all go to the theatre to keep up our love of 
nature and sociality } 

It was delightful to see "the house" again, and 
to feel ourselves recommencing our old task. How 
pleasant looked the ceiling, the boxes, the pit, every- 
thing ! Our friends in the gallery were hardly noisy 
19 



290 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

enough for a beginning ; nor, on the other hand, could 
we find it in our hearts to be angry with two com- 
panions behind us, who were a Httle noisier than they 
ought to have been, and who entertained one another 
with alternate observations on the beauty of the songs 
and the loss of a pair of gloves. All is pleasant in 
these recommencements of a former part of one's life ; 
this new morning, as it were, re-begun with the lustre 
of chandeliers and a thousand youthful remembran- 
ces. Anon the curtain rises, and we are presented 
with a view of the lighthouse of Genoa, equally de- 
licious and unlike, — some gunboats returning from 
slavery, salute us with meek puffs of gunpowder, 
about as audible as pats on the cheek, — the most con- 
siderate cannon we ever met with : — then follow a 
crowd and a chorus, with embraces of redeemed cap- 
tives, meeting their wives and children, at which we 
are new and uncritical enough to feel the tears come 
into our eyes ; and, finally, in comes Mr. " Atkins," 
with a thousand memories on his head, — husband 
that was of a pretty little singer some twenty years 
back, now gone, Heaven knows where, like a black- 
biii'd. It seemed wrong in Atkins to be there, and 
his wife not with him. Yet we were glad to see him 
notwithstanding. We knew him the instant we heard 
him speak. 

Native Land (a title, by the by, which looks like 
one of the captives, with an arm off) is worth going 
to see, for those who care little about plot or dialogue, 
provided there be good music. Part of the music is 
by Mr. Bishop, the rest from Rossini. It is seldom 
that any of Mr. Bishop's music is not worth hearing, 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 29I 

and one or two of the airs are among Rossini's finest. 
There is Di piacer^ for instance ; and we believe an- 
other, which we did not stay to hear. We fear it is a 
little out of the scientific pale to think Rossini a man of 
genius ; but we confess, with all our preference for such 
writers as Mozart, with whom, indeed, he is not to be 
compared, we do hold that opinion of the lively Ital- 
ian. There fs genius of many kinds, and of kinds 
very remote from one another, even in rank. The 
greatest genius is so great a thing that another may 
be infinitely less, and yet of the stock. Now Rossini, 
in music, is the genius of sheer animal spirits. It is 
a species as inferior to that of Mozart, as the clever- 
ness of a smart boy is to that of a man of sentiment ; 
but it is genius nevertheless. It is rare, 'effective, and 
a part of the possessor's character: — we mean, that 
like all persons v/ho really affect anything beyond the 
common, it belongs and is peculiar to him, like the 
invisible genius that was supposed of old to wait 
upon individuals. This is what genius means ; and 
Rossini undoubtedly has one. " He hath a devil," 
as Cowley's friend used to cry out when he read Vir- 
gil ; and a merry devil it is, and graceful withal. It 
is a pity he has written so many commonplaces, so 
many bars full of mere chatter, and overtures so full 
of cant and puffing. But this exuberance appears to 
be a constituent part of him. It is the hey-day in his 
blood ; and perhaps we could no more have the good 
things without it than some men of wit can talk well 
without a bottle of wine and in the midst of a great 
deal of nonsense. Now and then he gives us some- 
thing worthy of the most popular names of his coun- 



292 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

try, as in the instance above mentioned. Di piacer 
is full of smiling delight and anticipation, as the words 
imply. Sometimes he is not deficient even in tender- 
ness, as in one or two airs in his Othello ; but it is 
his liveliest operas, such as the Barbiere di Seviglia 
and the Italiana in Algieri that he shines. His 
mobs make some of the pleasantest riots conceivable ; 
his more gentlemanly proceedings, his bows and com- 
pliments, are full of address and even elegance, and 
he is a prodigious hand at a piece of pretension or 
foppery. Not to see into his merit in these cases, sure- 
ly implies only, that there is a want of animal spirits 
on the part of the observer. 

As we are not so fond of sharp criticism, as when 
we were young and. knew not what it was to feel it, 
we shall say nothing of one or two of the fair singers 
on this occasion, except that they did not appear to 
have a sufficient stock of the spirits we have been 
speaking of. To animal spirits, animal spirits alone 
can do justice. A burst of joy will be ill represented 
by the sweetest singing in the world that is not joy- 
ous, and that does not burst forth like a shower of 
blossoms. Of Miss Coward's singing we can yet 
form no judgment, as she had a very bad cold ; but 
she did her best with it, and did not apologize, which 
gave us a favorable opinion of her ; and her acting 
increased it. If she does not turn out to be a very 
judicious person, with a good deal of humor, sne will 
disappoint us. Madame Vestris, though she does not 
insinuate a sufficient stock of sentiment through her 
gayeties to complete the proper idea of a charmer to 
our taste, is always charming after her fashion ; but 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 293 

from what we recollect of her, we doubt whether her 
performance in this piece is one of her favorite ones. 
The song of Is't art, I pray, or Nature ? she gave with 
too little vivacity ; and her part in the bolero she 
seemed to go through more as a duty than a pleasure 
— which is anything but boleresque. Mr. Wood has 
great sweetness of voice, with taste and sensibility ; 
and the sweetness is manh'. He was encored in the 
'• romance " — Deep in a Dungeon ; but we preferred 
him in his first pleasing air. Farewell, thou Coast of 
Glory. We shall be glad to see him again, and to say 
more of him. We suspect he has more power than 
he yet puts forth. 

There is no necessity to criticise the dialogue. The 
author himself probably regards it as being nothing 
more than one of our old unpretending acquaintances, 
yclept " vehicles for music ; " carriers of song, as 
Messrs. Clementi's are of piano-fortes. There is one 
scene, however, upon which we shall say a word. It 
is that in which a maimed husband comes back from 
the wars, and is received by his wife with aversion 
and ridicule. It is true the caricature is evident ; it 
is the only way in w^iich such feelings can be made 
ludicrous ; but there is something in it from which 
the heart revolts. It is a dangerous point to divert 
ridicule from its proper objects, and give degrading 
representations of humanity. There is something, 
too, on these especial occasions, when the joke is car- 
ried far (as is the case in violent double meanings in 
company), by which privacy itself is turned into pub- 
licity, and we become painfully conscious of the pres- 
ence of those, with whom we could best interchange 



294 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

the most pleasurable ideas. We profess to be any- 
thing but prudes ; we have no objection, for instance, 
to Zanina's being reconciled to " little fellows," whose 
ways are delightful; — but because we are not pru- 
dish, we become the more jealous in behalf of what 
may be called the humanities of license. 

We must own we could not help laughing at some 
passages of Miss Goward's acting in this scene ; and 
perhaps we scan the matter somewhat too nicely. 
Those who laughed most would probably have been 
among the first to hug the remnant of their maimed 
friends to their heart. But the experiment is danger- 
ous. There is not too much sentiment in society after 
all ; and it is better not to risk what there is. W^ith 
what relief did we not call to mind, in our graver 
moments, the sight we had once, in those boxes, on 
the left hand, of a charming woman sitting next her 
gallant husband, Colonel C, who had returned from 
the wars with the frightful loss of his lower jaw. His 
wife married him after his return ; and this, we were 
told, was she. He had his mouth and chin muffled 
up. But how did he not seem more than repaid in 
her sweet and loving presence, which we fancied that 
she pressed still closer to him than was visible in that 
of any other woman seated by her husband's side. 
When she looked in his face, we felt as if we could 
almost have been content to have lost the power of 
kissing with lips, that we might have received in aU 
its beauty that kiss of the soul. 

1828. 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 295 



LADIES' BONNETS IN THE THEATRE. 

IN default of having anything better to write about 
in our present number, we beg leave to remon- 
strate with certain bonnets, and other enormities, 
with which the ladies put out our eyesight in the 
theatres. The bonnet is the worst. If you sit right 
behind it, it shall swallow up the whole scene. It 
makes nothing of a reo^iment of soldiers, or a moun- 
tain, or a forest, or a rising sun ; much less of a hero, 
or so insignificant a thing as a cottage and a peas- 
ant's family. You may sit at the theatre a whole 
evening and not see the leading performer. Liston's 
face is a glory obscured. The persons in your neigh- 
borhood, provided they have no bonneted ladies be- 
fore them, shall revel in the jocose looks of Farren or 
Dowton, and provokingly reflect the merriment in 
their own countenances, while you sit and rage in 
the shade. If you endeavor to strain a point, and 
peep by the side of it, ten to one (since Fate notori- 
ously interferes in little things, and delights in being 
" contrary," as the young ladies say) — ten to one but 
the bonnet seizes that very opportunity of jerking 
sideways, and cutting off your resources. We have 
seen an enthusiastic playgoer settle himself in his seat, 
and evidently congratulate himself at the evening he 
was about to enjoy, when a party of ladies, swimming 
into the seats before him, have been the ruin of all his 
prospects. Even a head-dress, without the bonnet, 



296 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

shall force you to play at bo-peep with the stage half 
the evening ; now extinguishing the face of some fa- 
vorite actress, and now abolishing a general or a 
murder. The other night, at the Quieen's Theatre, 
we sometimes found ourselves obliged to peep at the 
Freemasons in a very symbolical manner through the 
loops of a lady's bows. But the bonnet is the enor- 
mity. And we are sorry to say that the fair occu- 
pants who sit inside them, like the lady in the lobster, 
too often show a want of gallantry in refusing to take 
them off; for, as we have said more than once, we 
hold gallantry, like all the other virtues, to be a thing 
mutual, and of both sexes ; and that a lady shows as 
much want of gallantry in taking advantage of the 
delicacies observed towards her by the gentlemen, as 
a man does who presumes upon the gentleness of a 
lady. We felt, the other night, all the reforming 
spirit of our illustrious predecessors of the Tatler and 
Spectator roused within us, and in the same exact 
proportion to our regard for the sex upon witnessing 
the following prodigious fact: A lady, who came 
with a party into one of the boxes at Covent Garden, 
joined very heartily in expressing her disapprobation 
of some person in a seat below her, who was dilatory 
in taking off his hat. It chanced that this lady got 
into the very seat that he had occupied, and her bon- 
net turning out to be a much greater blind than the 
hat, what was the astonishment and the merriment of 
the complainant8s upon finding that she was still less 
accommodating than the gentleman? Nothing could 
induce her to perform the very same piece of justice 
which she'had joined in demanding from the other. 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 297 

We are aware that in modern, as in ancient thea- 
tres, ladies come to be seen as well as to see. 

" Spectatum veniunt, veniunt spectenturut ipsae.". 

But we are desirous that they should not pay them- 
selves so ill a compliment as to confound their dresses 
with themselves ; it is the bonnets that are seen, in 
these cases, and not the ladies. When seen them- 
selves, they make a part of the spectacle, but who 
cares to look upon these great lumps of gauze and 
silk? Something is to be allowed to fashion, but the 
wearers might be content with showing that their 
heads could be as absurd as other people's, and then 
lay aside the absurdity, and show that they under- 
stood the better part of being reasonable. They urge, 
when requested to take their, bonnets off, that they 
"cannot" do it; meaning, we suppose, besides the 
"will not," which "cannot" so often signifies, that 
their heads are not prepared to be seen — that their 
hair is not dressed in the proper manner ; but it would 
be easy to come with it so dressed ; the bonnet is 7tot 
the only head-dress in fashion ; and, above all, it 
would be a graceful and a sensible thing to remember, 
that in coming to a place where the object is to enjoy 
pleasure, their own capability of pleasure is interested 
in considering that of others. We never feel angry 
with a woman except when she persists in doing 
something to diminish the delight we take in com- 
plimenting the sex. 
183 1. 



'2^8 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 



MOLIERE'S TARTUFFE. 

THERE is something very delightful in the friend- 
liness of intercourse that has sprung up between 
France and England since the late troubles. Cabi- 
nets may quarrel again, and wars be renewed ; but 
the more intimacy there is in the mean time between 
the two nations, the less they will be disposed to be 
gulled into those royal amusements. Formerly this 
kind of intercourse was confined to kings and cour- 
tiers ; and whenever these gentlemen vs^ere disposed to 
pick a quarrel with one another, the people were sent 
on to fight, like retainers to a couple of great houses ; 
their employers all the while making no more of the 
business than if they were playing a game of chess. 
Nations are growing wiser on this head ; and nothing 
will serve better to secure their wisdom than an inter- 
change of their socialities and an acquaintance with 
the great writers that have made them what they are. 
It was with singular pleasure, therefore, that we 
found ourselves, the other night, sitting at a French 
play in the British metropolis, and that play Moliere's. 
There, on the stage, was Moliere, as it were himself; 
there spoke his very words, warm as when he first 
uttered them ; there he triumphed over hypocrisy, 
and was wise and entertaining and immortal. But 
what, in the mean time, had become of Louis the 
Fourteenth and his splendor.? What of all those lords 
and courtiers, who used to make a brilliant assemblage 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 399 

around him (we could not help fancying them in this 
very pit), and praising or withholding their praise of 
the immortal man, as the king spoke or held his 
tongue? Gone is all that once filled that splendid 
" parterre," like the flowers of any other garden : 
gone all their plumes, and ribbons, and pulvilio, and 
their bowing gallantries, and the very love that here 
and there lurked among them, like a violet among 
the tulips : but there stood the spirit of Moliere, as 
fresh as ever, and casting on their memory (when 
you thought of it) its only genuine lustre. 

It is curious to think how this great writer had to 
win his way into toleration through the prejudices 
attached to a stage life ; and how he depended upon 
men who were comparatively nothing for an intima- 
tion to the rest of the world, that a great and origi- 
nal genius was really worth something. It is to the 
credit of Louis, that he managed his kingship in this 
matter in good taste, and allowed the genius of Moli- 
ere to be pitted against the marquises and grimaciers 
of his court. If he had not stood by him, those but- 
terflies the petits-i7iaitres^ and those blackbeetles the 
priests, had fairly stifled him. It was lucky that he 
wrote when the king was no older, and before he had 
become superstitious. It gives one a prodigious idea 
of the assimiption of those times, and the low pitch at 
which an actor could be rated in spite of his being a 
great genius, that a shallow man of quality having 
found something ridiculous in Moliere's mention of 
a " cream tart" in one of his comedies, and not liking 
the raillery with which the author treated his criti- 
cism, contrived to lay hold of his head one day as the 



300 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

actor made him a bow, and crying out, " Tarte a la 
C7'eme^ Mailer e! Tarte a la crhnef rubbed his face 
against his cut-steel buttons, till it was covered with 
blood. For this brutality it never entered any one's 
head that an actor could have a remedy except in 
complaining to the king ; which the poet did, and the 
peer was disgraced. Another anecdote, to the same 
purport, is more agreeably relieved. Moliere, by way 
of being honored, and set on a level with gentlemen, 
had been made one of his Majesty's valets-de-chambre. 
Presenting himself one day to make the royal bed, his 
helper abruptly retired, saying that he should not 
make it " with an actor." Bellocq, another valet-de- 
chambre, a man of a good deal of wit, and a maker 
of pretty verses, happening to come in at this junc- 
ture, said, " Perhaps M. de Moliere will do me the 
honor of allowing 7ne to make the king's bed with 
him." Moliere was a man of great heart, very gener- 
ous, but sensitive also, and subject, in the midst of his 
pleasantries, to that melancholy which is so often 
found in the company of wit. Any delicacy towards 
him must, therefore, have been extremely felt, though 
on the subject of scorn and arrogance he, doubtless, 
had no proportionate soreness at heart. His wisdom 
and genuine superiority must hciYQ saved him from 
that. It was on the side of his sympathies, and not 
his antipathies, that Moliere was weak. He troubled 
himself with a wife too young for him : and after 
having ridiculed jealousy in his comedies, was fain to 
acknowledge that he felt it in all its bitterness him- 
self. Candor takes away the degrading part of these 
mortifications, but the sting is there, nevertheless- 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. -^OI 

» «j 

What endears us the more to his sincerity, and to the 
habitual kindness of his heart, is his saying to his 
friend Chappelle, whom he made his fiither confessor 
on this occasion, that " finding how impossible it was 
to conquer his jealousy, he began to think that it 
might be equally impossible in the object of his af- 
fections to get rid of her coquetry." The worst of 
it was, that their ages wxre unequal. His young wife 
(the daughter of an actress in his corps dramatlqzie^ 
which gave rise to a scandal refuted by the date of 
their connection) was herself an actres^, beautiful, 
and surrounded with admirers. She probably loved 
the poet as well as she could, but found that she loved 
people of her own age better ; while he, taking his 
undying admiration of beauty for a right to possess it, 
forgot, till too late, that poets' hearts remain young 
much longer than their persons. The consequence 
was, that two people, both of them, perhaps, very 
worth}^, became a grief and torment to one another, 
merely because incompatible marriages are permitted ; 
for Moliere had been a great ridiculer of marriage, 
and there, no doubt, lay a good part of the sting. He 
should have gone abroad more out of the society of 
his corps drajnalique^ and found some charmer to 
love less unsuiti^e to his time of life. There are 
born poetesses, in their way, among the women, whom 
temperance and the graces help to keep young even 
in person, and often in a more touching manner than 
the young and thoughtless. Moliere should have laid 
his laurelled head in the lap of one of these. She 
might have repaid his candor and tenderness with a 
like generosity. 



303 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

But we are forgetting the play. — The house (the 
Lyceum) opened for these performances last Wednes- 
day. It has been newly fitted up for the purpose, 
with fresh mouldings or compartments round the 
boxes (we forget exactly what), and a drapery of scar- 
let and w^hite, very handsome. The prices, to nearly 
the whole of the pit, remain the same as before, three 
and sixpence ; but six shillings are paid for seats on a 
bench or two, and seven for those in a part of the 
orchestra. Some boxes may be taken by the evening 
at two, three, and four guineas, according to the num- 
ber of persons and the situation of the box. The rest 
are let for the season at prices which look enormous ; 
being eighty, one hundred and twenty, or one hundred 
and sixty guineas for forty nights. The performances 
will be three times a week, Monday, Wednesday, and 
Friday, till Lent. Money is not taken at the door. 
There is a list of the places where you can get tickets, 
at the bottom of the play-bill, such as the booksellers, 
in Bond Street ; Marsh's, in Oxford Street ; Wilson's, 
at the Royal Exchange, &c. We bought ours at Mr. 
Neele's, a door or two on the left of the main en- 
trance to the theatre out of the Strand ; which we 
mention in order to show that people may go as usual, 
with no more trouble than if they paid at the door. 

The performances of the evening were Tartuffe, 
followed by a coronation of the bust of Moliere ; La 
Fille mal gai'dee^ a vaudeville in one act, and 
L' Ambassadeu?'^ another, in which Perlet, who acted 
Tartuffe, and who is the principal performer of the 
company, reappeared in the chief character. We 
shall confine ourselves to the first piece, which, in- 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 303 

deed, is the only one we saw, and which is quite 
sufficient to see and to think about for one time. Our 
observations upon it will not be directed to scholars 
only, and readers of French ; but, agreeably to the 
plan pursued by us in a former publication, we shall 
endeavor to give all such readers as have a relish for 
what is good, a taste of it somehow or other, let them 
have missed scholarship, great or small, as they may. 
French is a very common acquirement ; yet there are 
numbers unable to read even French, who very much 
deserve to do so, and who have a genuine perception 
of a CTood thinof when it comes before them. 

Few readers need be informed, but all will be glad 
to know, that the comedy of Tartufie (from which our 
popular pla}' of the Hypocrite is taken, which made 
the selection of it on this occasion every way judi- 
cious) may be ranked among the avant com iers of 
the knowledge and liberality of these times. It is a 
masterly satire upon religious hypocrisy ; and on its 
first appearance at Paris, in an age full of well-fed devo- 
tees and gallant confessors, was received accordingly. 
The first three acts were brought out originally before 
the court at Versailles, in the year 1664; but what 
may be called the first public representation of the 
entire piece did not take place till 1667, when it was 
performed at Paris, and prohibited next day by an 
order from the First President of Parliament. Moli- 
ere himself had to announce the prohibition, which 
he did in the following manner : " Gentlemen, we 
reckoned this evening upon having the honor of pre- 
senting you with the FEypocrite ; but Monsieur the 
First President does not wish us to play him." Our 



304 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

author must have reckoned very confidently on the 
king's protection to be able to joke In this manner.* 
The time, indeed, was lucky for him so far. Louis 
was then young and gay, and equally victorious in war 
and gallantry. He had a minister the avowed patron 
of men of letters (Colbert), and a general who loved 
humor and original genius (Turenne).t He did not 
think fit to let the piece re-appear for a year or two ; 
but Moliere remained on the best terms with him ; 
and, in 1669, Tartufle rose again In spite of its ene- 
mies, and has remained ever since a stock acting 
piece, — the glory of the French stage and the hatred 
of bigots and impostors. Perhaps they are more bit- 
ter against it in their hearts this very moment than 
they have been for these hundred years ; the Jesuits 
having trimmed their dark lanterns once more, and 
pieces of this kind offering the most insurmountable 
barriers against the reaction of priestcraft. | 

It has been thought curious by some, that in the 



* Another turn was given to this bon-mot in one of the provinces. The bish- 
op, in a place where they were going to perform the comedy, had lately died. 
His successor was not equally disposed in favor of theatrical representations ; and 
orders were given to the actors that they should quit the town before he made his 
appearance, which he was to do the next day. Accordingly, when the time was 
come for giving out the performances of the next evening, the announcer, affect- 
ing not to know that his lordship was to arrive so soon, said, " The Hypocrite, 
gentlemen, to-morrow." 

t See in the works of La Fontaine a pleasant account of a chat that took place 
on the road between Turenne and that poet, when the former was on his way to 
one of his campaigns. 

■+ The speech of Father Nitard to the Duke of Lerma may be taken as a speci- 
men of the pitch of insolence, worthy of TartufFe, to which priests could be trans- 
ported m those days. He was a Jesuit, and confessor to Louis's mother-in-law, 
the Queen of Spain. He told the duke one day, "that he ought to treat him 
with more respect, as he had every day his God in his hands (the Eucharist) and 
his Queen at his feet?" 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 305 

English Hypocrite the ridicule should be confined to 
sectarians, while in the original it attacks hypocrites 
of the establishment. This is to be accounted for on 
a variety of grounds. In the first place, the Catholic 
establishment, especially as it existed in France at 
that time, did not make such an exclusive matter of 
difference of opinion as the hierarchy in England ; 
w^hile, on the other hand, certain disputes in it were 
so fierce, and yet all parties pretended pretty nearly 
to such an equal measure of piety, that to make a 
heterodox person of the Tartuffe would have been 
absolutely to neutralize the satire on hypocrisy. It 
would have been a mere party libel. An English 
Methodist pretends to peculiar sanctity ; but formal- 
ists of a similar description in France were hardly 
known till a later period. Again, a Catholic estab- 
lishment is of a much more miscellaneous nature 
than a Protestant; admits a host of lay members, and 
otherwise aflbrds pretences for quacks and hypocrites 
of all sorts. It is a much larger world, in which vice 
may be found in the particular, with less offence to 
the main body. Then, again, there is confession, and 
the admission of interferers and regulators into the 
tenderest privacies of life. These people were very 
often at variance with the rest of the families whose 
heads they lorded it over (as Moliere has taken care 
to show) ; they were sometimes very officious in state 
matters and at court, where, indeed, the clerical power 
claimed a kind of sovereignt}^ of its own, independent 
of that of the civil and executive (a pretension against 
which our anti-popery men are still warning us) ; 
and, above all, at the time When Moliere wrote, the 
20 



3o6 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

king was not only 3'oiing and gay, and inclined to 
" cut " his religious mortifiers, but the Great Conde, 
then in favor, was a sworn enemy of bigots ; the Pope 
had not long since been bearded by the French au- 
thorities in Rome ; cardinals and bishops were, for 
the most part, laymen at heart, and mixed not only 
with politics but with the pleasures of life ; in short, the 
" cloth," as a matter of any solemnity, was at a disad- 
vantage ; and to pretend to an unusual measure of 
sanctity was, in some sort, to offend priests as well as 
laymen. Moliere himself tells us that he had the 
approbation of the Legate ; and that the greater part 
of the bishops, to whom he had taken care to read 
his work, were " of the same way of thinking as his 
Majesty." * Nevertheless, a tremendous cry was 
raised against it, even before it appeared. The author 
was called, he tells us, a libertine, a blasphemer, a 
devil incarnate ; and no sooner was it brought out, 
than very wortiiy people, acted upon by the cries of 
bigotry, joined in the wish to have it suppressed. The 
President of Parliament, who agreed to become the 
instrument of the suppression, was the celebrated 
Lamoignon, the friend of Boileau, and reckoned one 
of the best men in the world. Boileau helped him, 
perhaps, afterwards to a better judgment. Menage 
tells us expressly, that he himself spoke to the Presi- 
dent about it, and told him that the moral of the 
play was excellent, and calculated to be of public 
service.f 

Menage, in the same passage of his book, ventures 



* " Premier Placet, pr^sent^ aii Roi, sur la comedie du TartuflFe.' 
t Menagiana, p. 43. Edit. 1694. 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 307 

to prefer Moliere's prose to his verses. That learned 
wit had no very great taste in verses at any time, and 
had been accustomed to a very bad taste in particular, 
which Moliere rooted out. The classical scholar was 
judicious and generous enough at the time to acknowl- 
edge the reformation ; but, perhaps, he never heartily 
forgot his old propensities. Perhaps, also, he grudged 
Moliere that extraordinary facility in versifying, whidi 
Boileau has recorded with astonishment.* 

The happy power for which Boileau here praises 
his friend, is one of the most remarkable things in the 
Tartufle. Those who know the Hypocrite of the 
English stage, know the other in a certain way ; and 
know it well. But there is no comparison in the two 
styles ; every word telling with double force in the 
Frenchman's mouth, and uniting with the familiarity 
of prose the terseness of wit in rhyme. Let the read- 
er imagine the best colloquial verses of Dryden or 
Pope, full of wit and humor, uttering the finest knowl- 
edge of life, comprising a plot no less interesting than 
simple, agitating the feelings deeply before they have 
done, and dismissing the audience in the most gener- 
ous disposition for truth ; and they have a picture of 
this great and perfect comedy. An English audience, 
in their own language, could not relish a comedy in 
rhyme so well as the French can. Their manners 
are less conscious and mixed up. They could not so 
easily take an artificial grace for a natural one. But 
heard throuo:h the dimness of a language not habitual 



* Menage tells us, that when he himself sat down to write verses, he first 
" got together " his " rhymes ; " and that his rhymes sometimes took him three 
or four months to " fill up " 1 — Id. p. 261. 



3o8 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

to US, we become just enough sensible of the grace 
and power of the versification to admire the comedy 
the more, without being the less sensible of its truth 
and nature. 

In venturing to lay a scene of it before the reader, 
we have, therefore, not ventured to do it in rhyme. 
It is, indeed, an injustice to the author, in one sense, 
not to do so (supposing we were able to do it) ; but 
it would be hurting the effect of his truth and humor, 
which are the greater matters. We have selected the 
scene more particularly, because it exhibits what we 
conceive to be the greatest and most original trait in 
the author's genius ; to w4t, his delight in putting a 
good, broad, sustained, and even farcial-looking joke, 
knowing it to be founded in exquisite truth, and re- 
solving to relish it with us, unalloyed, for that reason. 
It is the spirit and o-zisto of the truth, taking place of 
the formal image ; and only making us hail and in- 
corporate with it the more. The scene is between 
Orgon, the credulous master of the house, who makes 
an idol of Tartuffe, and Dorina, the servant, a great 
enemy of the impostor, and burning to see him de- 
tected. Tartuffe has not yet made his appearance, 
and this is the first time Orgon has made his. Let 
the "reader admire the singular skill with which, in 
the midst of this "joke run down," the audience are 
let into the interior of the host's credulity, and of 
Tartuffe's power and worldliness. Orgon says but 
two things alternately throughout ; and the performer 
must be imagined at once giving us a sense of this 
monotony of ideas, and varying the expression of 
them for the true comic effect. A little pause must 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 309 

be fancied occasionally, and a face full of meaning. 
The author of the Hypocrite has not ventured upon 
it; — but imagine it in the hands of Munden ! To 
complete the scene, Orgon's brother-in-law, another 
enemy of Tartuffe's, is present, wondering all the 
while at his infatuation. Orgon has just come from 
the country, and after interchanging civilities with 
his brother, begs him to excuse him a little while he 
talks with the servant, and asks after the welfare of 
his house. He addresses her accordingly : — 



"Well, Dorina, has everything been going on as it should do these two days? 
How do they all do? And what have they been about ? 

Dor. My mistress was ill the day before yesterday with a fever. She had a 
headache quite dreadful to think of 

Org. A nd Tartuffe ? 

Dor. Tartuffe ! O, he is wonderfully well ; fat and hearty, a fresh com- 
plexion, and a xnouth as red as a rose. 

Org-, (turning about with an air of fondness). Poor soul I 

Dor. In the evening my mistress was taken with a sickness, and could not 
touch a bit of supper, her head was so bad. 

Org. A nd Tartuffe ? 

Dor. O, seeing she could not eat, he eat by himself; and very devoutly 
swallowed two partridges, with a good half of a hashed leg of mutton. 

Org. Poor sold I 

Dor. My mistress did not shut her eyes all night. The fever hindered 
her from getting a wink of sleep, and we were obliged to watch by her till 
morning. 

Org. And Tartuffe? 

Dor. Tartuffe, happy gentleman, with a comfortable yawn, goes right from 
table to bed, where he plunges into his warm nest, and sleeps soundly till 
morning. 

Org. Poor soul I 

Dor. At last we prevailed upon Madame to be bled, which gave her great 
relief 

Org. And Tartuffe ? 

Dor. Monsieur Tartuffe was very much relieved also. He found himself 
charming, and to repair the loss of the blood which Madame had sustained, took 
four draughts of wine with his breakfast. 

Org. Poor soul ! 

Dor. In short, both are very well now ; so I'll go and tell my mistress you 
are coming, and how happy you are to hear she is recovered." 



3IO THE \vishing<;ap papers. 

We have left ourselves very little room to speak of 
the actors. In fact, we must see them again before 
we can venture to speak much ; and then we shall 
feel diffident, except in speaking of what all the world 
may judge of. French nature is, in some respects, so 
different from ours, — we mean that the same nature, 
where great passions are not concerned, exhibits 
itself in such various ways through the medium of 
national manners, — that all critics ought to be cau- 
tious how they pronounce upon it, especially those 
who know more of the language in books than as it 
is spoken ; which we confess to be our case. We 
shall therefore wait, and judge cautiously. Mean- 
time, we cannot help saying, that M. Perlet appears 
to us a performer of the very first merit, full, both of 
sensibility and judgment, relishing, self-possessed, 
various, — " up," as the phrase is, to every situation, 
and every part of it ; and with an equal perception 
of the gravest as well as the lightest things he has to 
say. There was an air of singular depth and inten- 
tion throughout his performance ; and when he turned 
with that preternatural insolence of heart, after his 
detection, and pausing before he spoke, with his arm 
up, and an air of frightful preparation, told the master 
of the house " to go out of the house himself, for it 
was his," — there was something ghastly and awful 
in it. The house was so still we felt as if we could 
almost have heard the rain out of doors. Yet the 
same man, we are told, is wonderful in clowns and 
idiots, and is but a young actor. We must not forget 
Madame Daudel, a sort of younger Mrs. Davison ; 
very pleasant. She acted Dorina. 1828. 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 311 



HEREDITARY HOUSE OF PLAYERS. 

THE other day we heard of an indiscreet young 
Lord, who took it in his head to perform on a 
private stage, and performed very badly. This is the 
consequence of people going out of their spheres : 
an eccentricity, which the wisest cannot be guilty of 
with impunity. Had this tyro of quality, by the de- 
cease of the Peer, his brother, found himself in his 
right element, that is to say, in the House of Lords, 
he would, of course, have displayed a talent for legis- 
lation, because he inherits it. He may appear, for 
the present, to be nothing but a dandy and a foolish 
fellow, but the moment he got there, we should have 
his first wise speech ; and all the speeches that fol- 
lowed would be equally wise. To hear him talk just 
now, not being a Peer, we allow might lead people 
to suppose that he could do nothing but swear, and 
say " By G — d," and gamble, and babble of wine and 
women ; but only let the Peer, his brother, make 
room for him, only let him seat himself on the magic 
bench and wisdom shall flow from his lips ; no ques- 
tion, however knotty, shall come amiss to him : points, 
which the House of Commons could not decide, 
shall come before him to be settled, and he shall set- 
tle them well : the whole country shall be satisfied : 
his tenants shall rejoice, especially if he has given 
them reasons why three parts of them are to be 
ejected from their houses ; he shall disburse, till one 



312 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

in the morning, jurisprudence, eloquence, wisdom, and 
taxation, all by virtue of the noble cock-fighter his^ 
ancestor, whom Charles the Second gifted with those 
accomplishments by patent, and then roll to the gam- 
ing-house in his carriage to swear, and say " By 
G — d,'* and gamble, and babble of wine and women, 
out of pure refreshment after the fatigues of sapience. 

Now only fancy an actor attempting to legislate by 
virtue of his ancestors. It is clear the man would be 
preposterous. Had the late Mr. Kemble stood up in 
the House of Lords, and after his best consideration 
of the matter in hand, attempted to make a speech, 
who supposes that he could have at all equalled my 
Lord Grey.? Who fancies that Garrick could have 
risen there, and shewn any wit, however sharp and 
epigrammatic he may have been in the green-room.? 
Who thinks that Mr. Kean could even have looked 
clever; that Mr. Charles Kemble, not having a Lord 
to his father, could have had the least aspect of no- 
bility ; or that Mr. Dovvton or Mr. Farren could 
have been as facetious as the Duke of Newcastle.? 

On the other hand, if we could but discover the 
descendants of Garrick and the other actors of past 
times, great or small, what a House might we not 
have of hereditary performers ! That polity would 
be quite feasible, and it is astonishing that no aris- 
tocrat of histrionic propensities ever thought of it. 
When Charles the Second had his Richmonds, Graf- 
ton, St. Albans, and other little dukes, he doubted 
whether some of them ought to have been dukes, see- 
ing that their mothers were actresses. What a pity 
the idea did not come into his head of giving a new 



ESSAYS AND SKETCiiES. 



313 



kind of patent to Drury Lane, and making them and 
their descendants actors forever ! What a pity that, 
while he was ennobling the children of the Cleve- 
lands, Querouailles, and other illustrious ladies, and 
rearing up legislators out of their lightness, he did not 
en-histrionize the sons of the Nell Gwynnes, Bet- 
tertons, Lacys, and others, whose hereditary powers 
of performing Hainlet and Macbeth might have 
charmed us to the end of time ! That this miMit 
have been done, whatever Jacobin critics pretend, is 
proved by the existence of our hereditary lawgivers. 
To give law is no easy task. Our peers are jealous in 
vindicating its dignity, and in protesting that the vul- 
gar are unfit for it. To be sure there is the House of 
Commons, who are legislators and not hereditary ; 
but they would make sad work of it without the 
peers. In fact, they do but represent the peers, just 
as a lower house of players might perform under 
the auspices of an upper, and say nothing but what 
the great lords and box-mongers of Drury and Co- 
vent Garden allowed them. There is no talent 
among them ; no fit legislation. How can there be, 
if legislability can be conferred by ancestry, and is 
thus a \ki\w^ sui generis ? For either a talent for law- 
making is hereditary, or it is not. If it is not, then 
we could have no house full of hereditary wisdom, 
whereas, it is manifest we have. If it is hereditary, 
as we have seen it is, then it must depend upon being 
inherited, or it would be a pure figment, and no great- 
grandson would be capable of solving knotty points 
because his progenitor was a Marquis; which would 
be a very ludicrous conclusion, and Jlat treason 
against the sf'ate. 



314 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

The feasibility of an Hereditary House of Perform- 
ers {pecr-foi'iners rather), being thus established, 
the next thing is earnestly to recommend its adoption, 
and the next to enjoy the imagination of it. We 
fancy ourselves going to the Hereditary Play-house, 
not, as now, doubting of the success of this and that 
player, and vexed at the truth that is in us, because 
vs^e may have to record his failures, — but sure of fine 
actors and actresses in all the parts, delighting in the 
report we shall have to make of them, and wonder- 
ing how that Jacobin fellow that criticises them in the 
Tri-color^ can dare to contradict the whole feeling 
and intelligence of the community, which is a rap- 
ture of hereditary delight. For always let us bear in 
mind, that if some tens among us inherit the power to 
legislate, and may be made to inherit the power to 
act plays, all the rest of the world inherit a natural 
respect for them, and would be as much charmed to 
pay money at the pit door to see the Right Theatrical 
the actor of Macbetk^ as they are to give up their 
pound notes, daughters, and tenements to the Most 
Noble the Ejector and Legislator. 

The following may be taken as a specimen of the 
criticism in which it would be the " pride and pleas- 
ure " of all the loyal critics to indulge : — 

Last night the tragedy of Othello was performed 
at the Hereditary House of Players. The part of 
Othello by the Right Theatrical Joseph Garrick ; 
Desdemona, by the Right Fascinating Mrs. Betterton ; 
Emilia, by the Most Forcible Mrs. Pritchard ; Cassio, 
by the Right Clever Mr. Williams ; lago, by the 
Most Acute and Insinuating Mr. Ebenezer Cooke ; 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 315 

and the Duke of Venice, by his truly noble Repre- 
sentative Mr. Algernon Booth. We have only to 
name these illustrious peer-for772e7's^ to show how 
wxll they must have sustained their characters. The 
speech of the great Joseph Garrick — Had it pleased 
heav'ti^ &c., was all that could be expected from the 
known pathos of the performer's house ; it would be 
needless to dwell on the hereditary tones of Mrs. 
Betterton ; the title of Most Forcible shows what a 
hand and arm Mrs. Pritchard must derive from her 
ancestors ; Mr. Williams in Cassio, had all the drunk- 
ness and incapability of speech for which his pro- 
genitor was conspicuous ; and the Duke was most 
ducal. It is well known to the critical reader, that no 
part in the list of hereditary characters is better sus- 
tained than that of Duke : it has the singular good 
fortune of being at once the most easy and most 
noble of them all ; and the Duke before us could not 
have performed his part better if he had been the 
founder of his title. The unhandsome critic who 
writes in the Tri-color^ and who is the antagonist of 
everything established and all moral orders to the 
private boxes, would in vain dispute the talent and 
utility of this noble house, and its power to represent 
adequately its original worthies. In vain he says 
that the Right Theatrical Mr. Joseph Garrick is 
laughable instead of pathetic ; that the present Mrs. 
Betterton is the transmitter, not of her great-great- 
grandmothei-'s face, but of the several foolish ones 
that have intervened ; that the Most Forcible Mrs. 
Pritchard is as weak a woman as ever got in a pas- 
sion ; and that Mr. Algernon Booth, though good 



3l6 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

enough for a Duke, is fit for nothing else, and has not 
an idea in his head. Such opinions as these can 
only end in bringing everything great and established 
into contempt, and rendering the poor dissatisfied 
with the salaries paid to these delightful servants of 
the public. His enmity is the more absurd, when we 
come to consider that it does not signify, after all, 
whether the worthy progenitors of this noble house 
were, in a certain sense of the term, worthy or not, 
since it is the king that makes noble actors ; so that 
if the whole race were to be destroyed, he could 
make as many again to-morrow, and therefore se- 
cure the blessings of hereditary genius to our pos- 
terity. It is true shallow minds might argue against 
the necessity of demanding any talents in the first 
possessor of a theatrical title : but a mixture of these, 
as great stage-men well know, makes the system 
" work better : " and whether such were the case or 
not, there is this final argument to put down all 
sneerers and innovators forever ; to wit, that with- 
out an Hereditary House of Performers, to stand 
midway between the royal and plebeian ends of the 
town, there would be no safety for East-end or West. 
The citv, for want of a tragedy to keep them in awe, 
would immediately go in an uproar, and get up a 
tragic comedy at St. James's, to the great danger of 
his Majesty's person ; or the executive powers, for 
the want of a tragedy to remind it of the right of the 
subject, would march into the city, and help itself to 
all those pockets of the middle orders, out of which 
the Hereditary House is at present maintained for 
keeping them inviolate. 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 



317 



All which, if it is not the case in other countries, 
and vile nntheatrical republics, ought to be; and so 
the argument holds as good as if it were. 
1830. 



MADAME PASTA. 



GOING to the King's Theatre again is a very dif- 
ferent thing from renewing one's acquaintance 
with the other theatres. We confess, with all our 
love of Italian and of singing, we do not like it so 
well. The quiet seems pleasanter at first ; treading 
upon matting is a sort of polite and gingerly thing ; 
and it is interesting to look around for those beautiful 
faces belonging to Lady Charlottes and Carolines, 
dropping their lids down upon us as if they v/ore 
coronets, and not always the better for it. But 
the cue of polite life is to take indifference for self- 
possession ; and you are not seated long before you 
begin to feel that there is an air of neutralization and 
falsehood around you. The quiet is a dread -of com- 
mitting themselves ; — people come as much to be 
seen as to see ; — the performers in the boxes prepare 
for disputing attention with those on the stage ; — 
men lounge about the alleys, looking so very easy that 
they are evidently full of constraint ; the looks of the 
women dispute one another's pretensions ; — if you 
have been long away, you are not sure that something 
is not amiss in your appearance ; that you are not 



3l8 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

guilty of some overt act of a wrong cape, or absurd 
reasonableness of neckcloth ; in short, you feel that 
the great majority of the persons around you have 
come to the Opera becau.se it is the Opera, and not 
from any real love of music and the graces. The 
only persons really interested, with the exception of 
a few private lovers of music here and there, are the 
young and inexperienced ; musicians, who come to 
criticise the music ; and foreigners, whom it is pleas- 
ant to hear speaking their own language. After all, 
these last are the only persons who seem at home. 
The musicians are apt to be thinking too much of 
their flats and sharps, and compasses of voice. The 
young people, though they dare not own it to them- 
selves, soon get heartily tired of everything but look- 
ing at the company ; and the private lover of music 
gets as tired with the glare and commonplace of nine 
tenths of the performance. 

Thanks and glory to Pasta, who relieved us from 
all this spectacle of indifference and pretension the 
moment we heard the soul in her voice, and beheld 
the sincerity in her face. Pit and boxes were at once 
forgotten, quality, affectation, criticism, everything 
but delight and nature. Like a lark, she took us up 
at once out of that " sullen earth," and made us feel 
ourselves in a heaven of warmth and truth, and 
thrilling sensibility. If these are thought enthusiastic 
phrases, they are so. What others could we use to do 
justice to the enthusiasm of genius, and to the delight 
it produces in those golden showers out of its sky? 

We saw Madame Pasta, for the first time, years 
ago, in the character of the page in Figaro^ and 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 319 

afterwards in that of the female (we forget her name) 
in the Clemenza di Tlto^ who sings with her lover 
the beautiful duet, Deh p7'endi tm dolce amplesso. 
In the page, if we recollect, we thought her heavy 
and ungain. In the other part, we remember that 
Begrez, a singer not given to too much passion, stood 
while he was singing the duet with her, holding her 
hand, not indifierently as they generally do, but with 
tenderness and affection, cherishing it against his 
bosom ; a piece of nature which w^e have since at- 
tributed to her suggestion. If we are wrong, we beg 
his pardon. At all events, it was creditable to him, 
suggested or not. 

Since w^e have seen Madame Pasta again, the heavy 
kind of simplicity wdiich we recollect in her Figaro 
must either have been the consequence of her having 
a greater tact for nature and truth, than she at that 
time felt experience enough to j3ut forth, or her per- 
formance of the part may have been better suited to 
the character than we took it for. The page, in that 
very breath-suspended and conscious piece, which is 
always hovering on the borders of, strange things, is 
in reality in a very awkward position, and extremely 
sensible of it ; and we are not sure, if we could have 
seen Madame Pasta in it, with as much knowledge 
of her then as we persuade ourselves we have now, 
that we should not have found her the exact person 
for the character, and presenting a portrait, full of 
truth, in its very ungainness and want of teaching. 

Truth is the great charm of this fine vocal actress. 
She waits upon it, without claim or misgiving ; and 
like a noble mistress, truth in turn waits upon her, 



320 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

and loves her like her child. We never saw anybody 
before on the stage who impressed us with a sense of 
this sort of moral charm in its perfection. Even Mrs. 
Siddons had always a queen-like air in her nature, 
which seemed to be conscious of the homage paid it, 
and to crown itself with its glory. Madame Pasta, 
as the occasion demands, is tranquil, grave, smiling, 
transported, angry, affectionate, voluptuous ; intent 
at one minute as a bust, radiant as a child with joy 
at the next ; intellectual as a Muse, full of wily and 
sliding tones as a Venus ; in short, the occasion itself, 
and whatever it does with the human being. Imagine 
a female brought up in solitude, with a natural sin- 
cerity that nothing has injured, walking quietly about 
a beautiful spot, reading everything that comes in 
her way, accomplished, at ease, getting even a little 
too fat with the perfection of her comfort and her 
ignorance of anything ungraceful ; and imagine this 
same female gifted with as much sensibility as truth, 
and weeping, laughing, and undergoing every emo- 
tion that books can furnish her with, as she turns 
over the leaves ; and you have a picture of this noble 
performer, and the extraordinary effect she produces 
without anything like theatrical effort. Not that she 
cannot indulge the critics now and then with the idea 
of a stage actress, and set herself to make her bravura 
effective ; but truth is at the bottom even of that, and 
she is sure to throw in some tone and sweet reference 
to nature ; as much as to say to the lovers of it, " Do 
not imagine I have forgotten you." She is like a 
nature full of truth, brought out of solitude into the 
world; — and too much habituated to sincerity, too 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 33 1 

sweet in the use of it, and too conscious of the power 
it gives her, to forego so rare, so charming, and so 
triumphant a distinction. 

We do not pretend to make any discovery in this 
matter. The accounts we heard of her in Medea 
showed us that the discovery had been made ah'eady ; 
and it has been set forth by a critic, worthy of that 
name, in an article comparing this " perfection of nat- 
ural acting " with that of the French. With a reference 
to this article, which is to be found in the Plain Speak- 
er, Vol. II., and which we regret we have no room 
to quote, for nothing need be said of the opera itself, 
we must conclude. Tancredi is said to be one of 
the most popular of Rossini's operas, but is by no 
means one of his best; being crammed, in fiict, as 
full of commonplaces and old threadbare recitative 
as nine tenths of it can hold. It is theatrical clothes- 
man's music. But there is good in the remainder ; 
and the fine air, Di tanti paipiti^ is part of it. If 
any one thinks he has heard this air a hundred times, 
till he has got tired of it, let him never mind, but go 
and hear it from Madame Pasta ; he will then find he 
has never heard it before. We have left ourselves as 
little room to speak of the other performers, some of 
them excellent in their way, especially Madame Cara- 
dori ; but after our new, true, and most original ac- 
quaintance, even the best of conventional singers 
become comparatively uninteresting. Caradori is 
like a sweet and perfect musical instrument, by the 
side of her; not that she does not act too better than 
most singers ; she even contrives, in her manners, to 
give us an amiable as well as clever idea of her; 
21 



322 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

but Pasta, coming upon all this, even in her most tran- 
quil moments, seems like the very noontide of human- 
ity risen upon a cold morning of it. There is more 
eflective grace in the least of her movements, though 
she is too fat, and sometimes looks heavily so, than 
in all the received elegancies of the stage ; — so beau- 
tiful as well as great is truth. By the v\'ay, we had 
forgotten to say that her voice is not perfect. Who 
asks whether any voice is so, when sensibility and 
sincerity speak together, and the sound is hugged into 
one's heart ! 



II. 



We wish to add something to our last article re- 
specting the truth and beauty of this singer's perform- 
ance. It has been suggested to us, that Madame 
Pasta is not so much absorbed as people may think 
her in the business of the scene ; that she finds time, 
like other singers at the opera, for those little inter- 
changes of by-jokes and grown-children's play, by 
which they occasionally refresh themselves from a 
sense of their duties ; and that, in a concert-room or 
an oratorio, where no illusion is going forward, we 
should fiud more defects in her as a singer than we 
are aware of. Finally, another friend tells us, that 
we make a good deal of what we see ; and in our 
gratitude for a favorite quality, find more of it to be 
grateful for than exists anywhere but in our own 
imaginations. 

We doubt whether we are not committing the dig- 
nity of the critical character in thus admitting that 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 333 

our Opinion can be disputed privately. A corre- 
spondcDt is another matter. He approaches his critic 
with a curtain between, and the latter retreats farther 
into the mystery and multiplicity of his plural " we," 
leaving his questioner uncertain how many secrect 
faculties and combined resources of experience he 
may not have ventured to differ v/ith. But to ac- 
knowledge that we are mortal and individual men, 
" singular good "' fellows, who can be disputed with 
over one's wine and tea, face to face, and be forced to 
say " I ; " and give a reason, with more privilege to be 
wrong than any other man's reason ; all this would be 
very frightful to us, if instead of being critics or judges, 
sitting aloof above S3'mpathy, and periwigged with 
imposture, we did not profess to be what we really 
are, nothing but Companions: men who get from 
sympathy all they know, and do not care twopence 
for anything but truth and good-fellowship. 

We say, then, to these our objectors, public or 
private (for after all there is no ditierence between 
them, except as to the dry matter of fact ; we take a 
real bottle with one, and an imaginary one with the 
other) — we say, filling our glass, and looking them 
in the face, with all that bland beatitude of certainty, 
so convincing in any man, especially if he does not 
proceed to argue the point (as we have an unfortu- 
nate propensity to do) — My dear So-and-so, you are 
most horribly in the wrong. I wonder at a man of 
your intelligence. You surprise me. Do you think 
so, indeed? Well, you astonish me. I'm sure, if 
you would but reflect a little. Well, I never. You 
are the last man I should have thought capable 



324 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

of using that argument. Nothing will ever persuade 
me^ &c. 

These answers ought to be convincing. But as 
some unreasonable persons may remain, who are not 
so easily convinced, and as we have a conscience that 
induces us not to leave them out, we shall proceed to 
observe, that all which is urged against us on the point 
in question may be very true, and Pasta yet remain 
just what we have described her. In the first place, 
it is not necessary to suppose her absorbed in the 
business of the scene in order to do it justice. It 
would be impossible she could do so, if she were. 
'' If a man," said Johnson, " really thought himself 
Richard the Third, he would deserve to be hung." 
All we contend for is, that Madame Pasta has the 
power, to a surprising extent, of pitching herself into 
the character of the person she represents. The great- 
er this power, the more suddenly she can exercise it. 
She touches the amulet of her imagination in an in- 
stant, and is the person she wishes to appear. It is a 
voluntary power of the extremest degree, in one sense : 
and yet, in another, it is the most involuntary ; that is 
to say, she can abstract herself at a moment's notice 
from circumstances not belonging to the scene, and 
yet in the next she is under the influence of the char- 
acter imagined, as much as if she were a child. We 
will venture to illustrate this by a reference to author- 
ship and to ourselves. We shall be talking, for in- 
stance, in the midst of half a dozen friends: they 
shall all be talking v/ith us : and we shall be thinking 
no more of authorship than of the Emperor Nicholas. 
On a sudden it becomes necessary that we should 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 325 

look at our paper, and give a turn to some story or 
other piece of writing, serious or merry. In a mo- 
ment we are as abstracted as if we were a hundred 
miles off. We hear the conversation no more than 
people hear the rumbling of the coaches when they 
are not thinking about them ; and, with the laugh 
hardly off our lips, become as grave as the heroine of 
our story ; or, with the tears almost in our eyes, sit 
down to give the finish to a joke, and tickle ourselves 
into laughter with the point of it. Now why should 
we not believe, that what we ourselves can do, others 
cannot do twenty times as well? 

That Madame Pasta should not feel everything just 
as strongly as she imagines it, and that she should 
give evidences to near observers that she can occa- 
sionally amuse herself, as other favorite performers 
do, with certain quips and cranks among one another, 
takes away nothing of the imaginative truth of what 
she has to do, and only adds to the evidences of the 
voluntary power. We certainly doubt whether she 
could do this so well in some characters as in others. 
We should guess that she was least able to do it 
much, and most inclined to do it at all, when per- 
forming characters that tried her feelings the most 
severely. There are stories of Garrick's turning round 
with a comic grin in the thick of the distresses of 
King Lear ; and similar stories have been related of 
Mr. Kean. Believe them if you will ; but do not 
believe that those great performers felt less the truth 
of what they were about. Perhaps what they did was 
necessary, as a relief to their feelings ; just as sensitive 
men will shock company sometimes by cracking jokes 



326 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

upon some topic of distress. It is not because they 
do not feel it, but because they do, and because some 
variety of sensation is necessary to enable them to 
endure their feelings. If an actor were to feel, un- 
mixed, all he seems to feel in such characters as Lear, 
he would go nigh to lose his senses in good earnest. 
Tragic actresses, the most eminent, have been known 
to faint and go into fits upon the performance of a 
trying character. Perhaps they would not have done 
so had their personal character contained variety and 
resource enough in it to call in the aid of this occa- 
sional volatility. Even Garrick is known to have 
looked prematurely old. Yet Garrick had everything 
to support him — fortune, prudence, and a good con- 
stitution. When we hear actors, equally great in 
their way, but less happy in bodily frame, rebuked 
severely for certain excesses alleged against them, we 
sometimes think it a pity that the rebukers do not 
know w^hat it is to go through all that wear and tear 
of sensation, and to be at a loss how to keep up a 
proper level of excitement in their general feelings. 
We are not sure that Madame Pasta does not uncon- 
sciously let herself grow fatter than might be wished, 
out of an uneasy feeling of something to be supported 
and strengthened in this way ; especially v/hen it is 
considered that persons of her profession lead arti- 
ficial lives, and cannot so well be kept healthy as oth- 
ers, by good hours and a life otherwise uninterfered 
with. 

As to a concert-room or an oratorio, it is a dull 
business compared with singing amidst the feelings 
of a scene. Such places are fittest for instrumental 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 327 

performances, and for instrument-like singers. In 
the concert-room the audience expect little passion, 
and find it. They are themselves in a dull and for- 
mal state ; there is often a majority of musicians pres- 
ent, and a majority of musicians cannot be of the first 
order, nor do they desire anything of the first order in 
others. They wish the singers to act up simply to 
their own notions of excellence, which are but a re- 
flection of themselves. All is quiet, mechanical, medi- 
ocre. Up gets a lady or gentleman, book in hand, 
and out of this is to disburse us the proper quantity 
of notes, checked by that emblem of reference to the 
dead letter. She does so ; is duly delivered of a B, 
or a D, and everything is '' as well as can be ex- 
pected." 

So in an oratorio. The audience are all assembled, 
as grave as need be ; the season, and the usual dull 
character of oratorios, helps to formalize them ; there 
is a good deal of mourning in the house, and sacred 
music is to be performed, mixed with a little illegal 
profane. That is to say, there is nothing real in the 
business, and nobody can be either properly merry or 
mournful. Which is just the case. In comes a gen- 
tleman, dressed in black, hitching his way along side- 
w^ays, and leading a lady up the alley behind the 
orchestra ; another follows, and another, equally 
polite and preparatory : it is Madame So-and-so, in a 
hat and feathers ; it is Miss W. or Mrs. Z., all dressed 
like other gentlewomen, which is odd ; and like other 
gentlewomen they take their seats, and look as if they 
ought to drink tea. Music books make their appear- 
ance, as in the concert-room, and up rises the lady or 



328 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

gentleman to sing in the same formal manner, and be 
discreet in their flats. The sacred music drags, the 
profane music hops, and the audience wish them- 
selves in their beds. 

Madame Pasta may probably not excel at such ex- 
hibitions as these. We do not desire that she should. 
It would not be easy to persuade us that, sing where 
she may, her singing would not be better than the 
most formal perfection ; but the worst thing we can 
say of an oratorio is, that not even she can take us 
there. Put her on the stage, or in a company among 
friends, let loose her feelings, and then we have the 
soul of music ; and this is the only real music in the 
world. 

That we make what we find on such occasions, 
and listen with our imaginations upon us, is only 
saying, in other words, that the occasion is fit to 
excite the enthusiasm ; otherwise how does it happen 
that it is not equally excited on others? Doubtless 
there must be enthusiasm and imagination to do fit 
justice to the same qualities in the performer. Love- 
liness must have love. But how is it that love is 
excited by some things and not by others? How is 
it that multitudes are wound up to enthusiasm by one 
orator and not by another, and that Madame Pasta 
jDroduces the same sensation from Naples to Berlin? 
She is not an unknown singer, trumped up by a sol- 
itary enthusiast. Cities are her admirers ; and she 
would take hearts by storm everywhere, whether 
critics explained or not by what magic she did it. 

It is nevertheless very pleasant to us to know what 
the magic is. We never feel the value of criticism, 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 329 

except when it enables us to double our delight in this 
manner ; for none can hold in greater contempt than 
we do the common cant of criticism, or less pride 
themselves in finding out those common defects to 
which critics in general have a natural attraction. It 
is truth that gives Madame Pasta her advantage ; the 
same truth, yes, the very same spirit of sincerity and 
straightforwardness which is charming in conversa- 
tion and in matters of confidence ; which enables 
one face to look at another, unalloyed with a con- 
tradiction, and makes the heart sometimes gush in- 
wardly with tenderness at the countenance that little 
suspects it. The reason is, that some of the most 
painful infirmities with which the state of society 
besets us are then taken away, and we not only think 
we have reason to be delighted, but are sure of it. 
For this we know no bounds to our gratitude ; and 
it is just ; for you could not more transport a man 
shaken all over with palsy by suddenly gifting him 
with firmness, than }'ou do any human being, in the 
present state of things, by making him secure upon 
any one point which he ardently desires to believe in. 
There is, therefore, a moral charm, of the most liberal 
kind, in Madame Pasta's performances, which argues 
well for her personal character ; and personal char- 
acter, wish as we may, always mingles, more or less, 
with the impression created by others upon us. It is, 
indeed, a part of them, which helps to make them 
what they are, ofi' a stage or on it, pretending or not 
pretending. It is true there is a difierence between 
moral truth and imaginative ; and it does not follow 
that, because Madame Pasta tells the truth in every- 



330 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

thing she does on the stage, she should be an example 
of the virtue elsewhere. It is an argument, however, 
that she would be so ; just as the taste for an accom- 
plishment implies that a person is more likely to 
excel in it than if there were no such taste. Madame 
Pasta has to look sorrowful, and no sorrow can be 
completer: — she has to look joyful, and her face is 
all joy, — as true and total a beaming as that of a girl 
without a spectator, who sees her lover hailing her 
from a distance. We have seen such looks, and they 
have stood us instead of any other certainty. Mad- 
ame Pasta knows the truth well, and knows how to 
honor it ; and this is an evidence that the inclination 
of her nature is true, whatever the world may have 
done to spoil it. We are aware, mind, of no such 
spoliation. Our impulse, if we knew this charming 
performer (which is a pleasure incompatible with 
the confounded critical office we have taken upon us), 
would be to give as implicit belief to everything she 
said off the stage as on it. But we wish to guard 
against a wrong argument, and to show the triumph 
and the beautiful tendencies of truth, whether borne 
out in all their quarters or not. 
1828. 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES, 33 1 



OPERA OF THE WHITE AND RED ROSE. 
— MADAME PASTA IN THE LOVER. 



M 



AYER'S opera of the White and Red Rose 
(yLa Rosa Bianca e la Rosa Rossa) was 
brought out at the King's Theatre on Saturday even- 
ing, Madame Pasta being the hero of it. We remem- 
ber noticing a playbill of this piece once at Genoa, 
and making up our minds not to go and see it, be- 
cause it was historical. Song is for passion in its 
own shape, and not mixed up with the squabbles and 
pretences of history. Great writers, as a musical 
friend observed to us, have rarely laid their scenes 
in the midst of these impertinences, which augur ill 
for the composer. It is true, there is apt to be very 
little history after all in such pieces ; but what there 
is does them injury. We do not want a singing Earl 
of Derby, singing foot-guards, and a warbling sheriff. 
These matters of the Court Calendar jar against one's 
enthusiasm, and the case is worse because it comes 
home to us in our own country. Fancy a love adven- 
ture mixed up two centuries hence with the differ- 
ences between our Military Premier and Mr. Hus- 
kisson ; the king going in and out, singing Oh Dio ; 
Lord Goderich tender in a cavatina, the ladies all 
mystified, and a chorus of journalists at midnight 
{JVumi and lufni) calling upon the powers above to 
throw a little light on the business. 



332 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

Slg'nor Huski. Dice di si, come io, il 
Vellingtonne. 
{Entra il Duca.)' Di si? Di no. 
Coro di Giornalisti. Or cosa dice Huskisonne? 

[J/r. H. The Noble Duke says 
Yes ; so all is done. 
{JBnter Duke.) Says Yes ? Says No. 
Chorus of yournalists. Now what says Huskis- 

son ?] 

Reader. But, sir, this is a caricature. 

Critic. It is so, like the subject ; but the spirit of 
our objection is good, and opera goers feel it to 
be so. 

Signor Mayer's opera is not of the highest order, 
nor is it by any means of the lowest. We do not 
know whether this is the same composer who has 
written several pleasing airs, — one of them with a 
very striking and characteristic exordium ; we mean 
Chi dice mal d' amore. The emphatic drop on the 
last syllable of the word falsita in that air, is a touch 
of real genius. Madame Pasta would give it with a 
corresponding beauty of gesture, impressing her firm 
and indignant hand upon it with all the grace of a 
noble scorn. There are two Mayers, we believe, both 
writers of pleasing melodies; though, perhaps, 'we 
are naming together two unequal men. One of them 
is the author of a graceful ballad, beginning Donne 
V amore escaltro foragletto. At all events, the name 
led us to expect more melody than we found in the 
new opera ; or, perhaps, we should say, more origi- 
nal airs: for there is a vein of rambling melody 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 333 

throughout the piece, and, if not much invention, 
a great deal of taste and feeling. The music is so 
good that we expect it every minute to be better. 
There is now and then a very delicate commentary 
of accompaniment, throwing out little unexpected 
passages botli learned and to the purpose. The best 
of the regular compositions are the duets. There are 
two between Madame Pasta and Curioni (/;2 tal mo- 
mento in the first act, and E deserto il bosco in the 
second) for which alone the opera is worth going to 
hear. Curioni, who has a manner of feebleness and 
indifference in general, seems inspired when he comes 
to sing with Pasta. Her part is one of the least 
effective ones she has had ; but everything becomes 
elevated by that fine face of hers, and that voice breath- 
ing the soul of sincerity. The words core and amove 
are never commonplaces in her mouth. They resume 
all their faith and passion. They are no more like 
the same words in ordinary, than gallantry is like 
love, or than scipio^ any walking-stick, was Scipio 
who supported his father. Pasta has a large heart in 
her bosom, or she could not have a voice so full of it. 
This it is that gives her the ascendency in the scene : 
that lifts her, " dolphin-like, above the element she 
lives in," and sports, and rules, and is a thing of life, 
in those deep waters of her song. Not that other 
singers have no hearts, and may not be excellent peo- 
ple, but that they have not the same faith in the very 
sounds and symbols of cordiality, and cannot be at a 
moment's notice in the world which they speak of. 
The common world hampers and pulls them back. 
It was well noticed by a lady in the pit, that she is 



334 '^^^ WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

not hindered of her purpose by a break now and then 
in her voice, the bubble of a note or so. She shdes 
over it as if it were a molehill under her chariot 
wheels, and abates nothing of her triumphant prog- 
ress ; nay, adds a grace and a dignity on the strength 
of it, as if it were a new proof how indifferent to the 
spirit of the passage was the ground the most mate 
rial to those who can look no higher. Besides, there 
is a suffering and permission in it that belongs em- 
phatically to passion. If it were for want of skill or 
deliberation, it would be another thing. But in the 
rich haste of emotion, pearls are dropped as of no con- 
sequence. The profusion of real wealth allows us to 
notice them only as things that would make others 
poor. 

Being closer to Madame Pasta than usual this 
night, we had a completer opportunity of noticing the 
extraordinary grace of her movements. She is never 
at a loss, because she never thinks of being so. She 
leaves the whole matter to truth and nature, and these 
settle it for her, as completely as they do for an infant. 
You might make a picture from any one of her pos- 
tures. A favorite action of hers, and one extremely 
touching, is, after venting a passion of more than usual 
force, to put up her hands before her eyes, laying and 
shutting up, as it were, her looks in them, as if to hide 
ftom herself the sight of her own emotion. When she 
opens her arms in a transport of affection, leaning at 
the same time a little back, and breathing and looking 
as true as truth could wish, her heart seems to come 
forward for one as real, and her arms to wait the 
sanction of its acknowledgment. For all arms, be it 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 335 

observed, are not arms, whatever they pretend ; any 
more than all that pretends to be love is love, or all 
eyes have an insight. Some arms are a sort of fore 
legs in air, merely to help people's walking. Others 
have machines at the end of them, to take up victnals 
and drink with, or occasionally to scratch out one's 
eyes. Others, more amiable, are to hang armlets and 
bracelets on, or to be admired for a skin or a shape ; 
and then ladies put them in kid gloves, on purpose to 
take them off, and lift them indifferently to their cheek 
with rings on their fingers, and people say. What an 
arm Mrs. Timson has ! But the real arms are to 
serve and love with, to clasp with ; to be honest and 
true arms, content to be admired for their own sakes 
if the jDOSsessor be worthy, but happy to enable you 
to lose sight of them for the sake of the heart and the 
honest countenance. It is out of an instinct to this 
purpose (for the least of our gestures have their rea- 
son, if we did but scan it) that Madame Pasta throws 
back her arms, as if things only in waiting, and brings 
forward her heart, as if the approbation of that alone 
would sanction their use. It is for a similar reason, 
that we admire those women who can afford to make 
no display of the beauty of any particular limb, but 
reserve it for the objects of their love and respect to 
"find out. It shows they are richer than in mere limbs. 
And, for the same reason, one hates all that French 
dancing, with fine showy limbs and senseless faces, 
which follows the musical performances at this house, 
and is just the antipodes of all that charms us in Pas- 
ta's singing. If her limbs were among the poorest 
jn the world, they would become precious as warmth 



336 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

and light, with that smile and those eyes ; whereas, 
if a French dancer could, by any possibility, have 
limbs like a Venus, with a face no fitter to look at. 
for ten minutes, or for one, than nineteen out of 
twenty of them possess, she might as well, to our 
taste, be as wooden and pointed all over as a Dutch 
doll ; which, indeed, in her inanimate posture-mak- 
ings and senseless right angles of toe, she very much 
resembles. These people are made up out of the toy- 
shop. They are dolls in their quieter moments, and 
tee-totums in their livelier. A mathematician should 
mari;y one of them for a pair of compasses. 

We must not forget to mention that Madame Cara- 
dori, whose illness had been previously stated to the 
public, went through her part in the opera in spite of 
it, though evidently in a state of suffering. She could, 
of course, be expected to do little ; but what she did 
was good, and, at least, wanted nothing of its touch- 
ingness. There is, at all times, something amiable in 
the manner and appearance of this singer. Her more 
than usual delicacy the other night, together with her 
white dress, which had a long bodice with a cross 
over it, and her hanging, uniform-looking sleeves, 
gave her the appearance of a Madonna in one of 
Raphael's pictures. 

We must relate an anecdote of Madame Pasta, 
highly corroborative of what has been said of her. 
Some gentlemen, who knew her well, informed a 
friend of ours when he was in Paris, that she would 
come home from the opera, and sit in a passion of 
tears at the recollection of what she had been acting. 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 337 

They told him that nothing could be more unaffected, 
and that she would say she knew it to be idle, but that 
she " could not get the thing out of her head." This 
is just what imaginative people would expect her to 
say. She never pretended that she had taken herself 
for the character she represented, but she had sympa- 
thized with it so strongly that it became the next 
thing to reality ; and if our hearts can be touched 
and our color changed by the mere perusal of a trage- 
dy, how much more may not a woman's natiu-e be 
moved that has been ahnost identified Vv'ith the ca- 
lamities in it; that, by force of imagination, has 
brought the soul of another to inhabit her own warm 
being ; and has entertained it there as the very guest 
of humanity, giving it her own heart to agitate, and 
taking upon herself the burden of its infirmities ! 
182S. 



ON FRENCH OPERA DANCING. 

DANCING is either the representation of love- 
making, or it is that of pure animal spirits, 
giving way to their propensity to motion. It is the 
latter, most probably, that strikes out the first idea of 
it, as an art ; the former, that completes and gives it 
a sentiment. The rudest savages dance round a vis- 
itor. Politer ones treat him with a dance of the 
sexes. 

But French opera dancing is neither the one nor 
the other. It pretends both, only to show how little it 



33^ THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

has to do v/ith either. There is love in the plot ; there 
is mirth in the stage directions : but you find it no- 
where else. Think of a man making love, with no 
love in his countenance ! of a girl, as merry as a 
grig, but destitute of the least expression of it, except 
in her toe ! A French ballet is like a rehearsal, with 
the emotion left out. There is scenery ; there are 
dresses and decorations ; some story is supposed to 
be going on ; but the actors are really apart from nil 
this ; wrapped up in themselves, and anxious for 
nothing but to astonish with their respective legs, and 
fetch down applause from the galleries with a jump. 

Enter, for instance, two lovers, with a multitude of 
subordinate lovers to dance for them while they rest. 
The scene is in Turkey, in Italy, in Cyprus ; but it 
might as well be in the dancing-master's school-room, 
for anything it has to do with the performers. For- 
ward comes the gentleman, walking ver}'- badly, like 
all dancers by profession. He bridles, he balances 
himself, he looks as wooden in the face as a barber's 
block, he begins capering. That there is no meaning 
in his capers but to astonish, is evident ; for, in his 
greatest efforts, he always pays the least attention to 
his love. If it is love-making, it is the oddest in the 
world, for the lady is forgotten, the gentleman capers 
by himself, and he expresses his passion by seeing 
how many jumps he can take, liow often he can 
quiver his feet before he comes down, how eminently 
he can stand on one leg, and, finally, how long he 
can spin round like a tee-totum, as if he had no brain 
to be made giddy with. Suddenly he stops, like a 
piece of lea,d ; and having received his applause for 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 339 

being a machine, stalks off as proud as a peacock, 
curving out his arms, holding his head up, and turn- 
ing his toes east and west, as if it were a grace to be 
splay-footed. All this is certainly not " the poetry of 
motion." 

It is now the lady's turn. She presents herself 
equally alone and enamoured ; she looks grave and 
anxious, not at her lover, but the pit ; no other emo- 
tion is in her face, but then her toes are very lively, 
and she begins by standing upon them. She seems 
to say, '• You see what it is to love and be merry ; it 
is to look like a school-girl before her master, and to 
have insteps as pliable as India-rubber." She then 
moves onward a little, and careers hither and thither, 
prettily enough as long as it resembles any real dan- 
cing ; but this is not her ambition. On a sudden she 
stops like the gentleman, balances herself, tries her 
arms and legs, like a young crane learning to fly, then 
jumps up and down as high as she can, quivering her 
calves (those only seats of emotion), and finally gives 
a great spin round, as long as possible, looking like a 
bust and a joair of legs, with an inverted bowl for a 
petticoat. This she puts an end to by the usual leaden 
stop, as if rooted with fright ; the tribute of applause 
is received with the due petrifaction of countenance, 
or a smile no less unmeaning ; and ofl'she walks like 
her Inamorato, equally pompous and splay-footed, to 
stand cooling herself in the background, and to aston- 
ish the inexperienced with the shortness of her dra- 
pery and the corpulence of her legs. 

Those legs are a sight, unquestionably. If any two 
balustrades of a bridge were wanting, here is the 



340 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

remedy. There is a fair dancer now at the opera, 
who, from a principle well known to the metaphysi- 
cal, seems to be ostentatious of two phenomena of 
this kind, in the exact proportion that she ought to 
conceal them. She appears to consider them as prize 
calves, and makes as great a show of her favorites as 
an Essex grazier. The simile is not handsome, but 
we forget the bearer is a woman when we look at 
such legs. Not that very true women may not have 
legs a little superfluous. Madame Pasta has them. 
Mrs. Jordan's legs were handsome rather as a man's 
than a woman's ; and yet who ever doubted that she 
was a very charming female ? It is not the leg, but the 
spirit with which it is worn ; and, upon this princi- 
ple, a woman "with thick ankles may step about our 
imaginations like a fairy, and another with thin ones 
trample them as if they were lead. If a woman has 
grace at her heart, her movements will be graceful and 
her step soft, let her legs be what size they may. If 
she has not, the downwardness of her spirit will put 
a vulgar weight in her feet, let them be naturally as 
light as a zephyr's. She shall shake the room as she 
walks, like an ale-wife. But huge legs in a female 
are not particularly valuable for their own sakes, as 
our fair friend at the opera seems to think. Dancing 
tends to make them so ; but this is not what we go 
to see dancing for. Here, however, lies the secret. 
Body is everything in opera dancing, and mind noth- 
ing. To show a limb, they think, is — to show a 
limb. So it is ; a7id nothing else. But this is a 
stretch of the intellectual to which they cannot arrive. 
The audience instinctively know better ; and though- 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 34I 

they stay the afterpiece to admire more than they pre- 
tend, are at once amazed and disappointed ; amazed 
at the beauties lavished upon them, and disappointed 
to find that the effect is not more beautifuL This is, 
perhaps, as it should be, everything considered ; but 
then it is not dancing. There might be a great deal 
less display, and a little more sense ; and then people 
might think of those they loved, and have their im- 
aginations not unseasonably touched : for grace is the 
link between body and soul ; and a sprinkle of that 
Attic salt on the public mind is not without its use. 
At present, whatsoever their inclination to the con- 
trary, the spectators, before the scene is half over, feel 
only that there is a glare and an impertinence ; that a 
few half-naked-looking people are walking about, and 
twirling, and looking stupid ; and that if this is vo- 
luptuousness, it is a very indifferent thing. The young 
may be amused with the novelty, and the imaginative 
may try hard to be kind to it, but if there are other 
persons present, who have no greater ideas of what is 
elegant and attractive, than the scenes they meet with 
in French opera dancing, they are in as fair a way as 
can be of being the commonest and weakest people 
in the world, and realizing as little true pleasure as 
the wooden faces they look at. Now and then there 
is a single figure worth seeing ; sometimes, though 
rarely, a whole ballet. Des Hayes used to come 
bounding on the stage like a deer. Angiolini was 
interesting in Flora ; and even Vestris (as long as 
you did not see his face) had an effect beyond that of 
his twirling, when he touched her round the waist as 
Zephyr, and took her with him up in the air. But 



342 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

there was poetry in the story. The ah* blew from 
the fields of Ovid and our childhood. The best opera 
dancer we ever saw was a female at Turin, of the 
name of De Martini. She united the activity of the 
French school with the grace and fervor of the Ital- 
ian ; and did not make her bounds and her twirlings 
for nothing. She would come, for instance, from the 
other end of the stage, in a series of giddy move- 
ments, and finish them with pitching herself into her 
lover's arms. Here was love and animal spirits too, 
each warranting and throwing a grace on the other. 
Surely a set of Italian or Spanish dancers would make 
a revolution in this matter, in the course of a season 
too, and put an end to a scliool which must be as 
little profitable in the comparison as it is unmeaning 
and delightless. 

How different a French opera dance, and one of 
their dances on a green of a Sunday evening ! We 
have had the pleasure of seeing the latter ; and 
nothing could be merrier or to the purpose. But 
there is all the difference in the world between French 
nature and French art. The one is human nature — 

" Dance, and Provencal song, and sun-burnt mirth ; " 

the other is Paris and affectation, the pedantry of 
pleasure. French opera dancing is like French paini- 
ing, — a petrifaction of art, an attempt to set rules 
above the relish of the thing ; and it ends in the same 
way, by being a kind of inanimate sculpture. Their 
dances on the green are as good as the dancing of 
birds. Spanish dancing is more passionate. We 
thought when we first saw a bolero we had never seen 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 343 

dancing before. Those fervid alternations of court- 
ship, and that wild careering of one person round 
the other, dancing in every limb, and seeming to 
sweep the very ground as they went with the tips of 
their fingers, the music fermenting all the while, and 
the castanets cracking like joints, — it looked like a 
couple of aboriginal beings newly made out of the 
whole ardor of the south, and not knowing how to 
vent the tormenting pleasure of their existence. De 
Martini made us feel that all this might be controlled 
into a sentiment ; and Italian dancing, we should 
guess, would be as fine, in its way, as Italian paint- 
ing and music, if properly cultivated. The Germans 
used to be violent dancers, as became their heavy- 
laden tables. Of late years they have taken to the 
most languid and voluptuous of all dances, as if they 
had no alternative but to go to an extreme. We must 
not omit to do justice to one French dance, the min- 
uet, which is the perfection of artificial grace, the 
dance of the courtier and fine lady, brimful of mutual 
compliment, arising out of an infinite self-satisfaction. 
A bow or courtesy is made, as if it were to nothing 
under a prince or princess. A tip of the finger is 
presented as if it were a jewel. Hov^ proud the 
deference ! How dignified the resumption ! What 
loftiness in the hat ! What greater ascendency in 
the very sink of the petticoat ! What idolatry and 
self-idolatry of approach ! What intensity of separa- 
tion, the parties retreating with high worship from one 
another, as if to leave space enough for their triumph 
to swell in ! It seems as if none should dance a min- 
uet after Louis the Fourteenth and his Montespans. 



344 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

It is the excess of pretension, becoming something 
real on that account ; and belongs to an age of false 
triumph and flattered assumptions. The Mhiuet de 
la Cour is the best minuet, and seems to have been 
inspired by its name. Mozart's minuet in Don Juan 
is beautiful and victorious ; but it is not as pregnant 
with assumptions as the other, like a hooped petticoat ; 
it does not rise and fall, and step about in the same style 
of quiet and undoubted perfection, like a Sir Charles 
Grandison or Lady Grave-airs : it is more natural and 
sincere, and might be chmced anywhere by any two 
lovers, not the nicest in the world, proclaiming their 
triumph. We have seen Charles Vestris and somebody 
else, we forget whom, dance the Minuet de la Cour, 
but it was not the real thing. You missed the real pre- 
tenders, — the proper fine gentleman and lady. Mr. 
Kemble should have danced a minuet, if he could 
have danced at all ; and Mrs. Oldfield risen in her 
" chintz and Brussels lace " to accompany him. 

Let us not, however, be ungrateful to all stage- 
dancing in England. Three stage loves have we 
known in the days of our 3-outh ; as good love, and 
better, than is usually entertained tov/ards persons 
one is not acquainted with ; for it gave us an interest 
ever after in the fair inspirers : and two of these ladies 
were dancers. Our first passion of the kind was for 
the fine eyes and cordial voice of Miss Murray, after- 
wards Mrs. Henry Siddons ; our second for the lady- 
like figiu'e and sweet, serious countenance of Miss 
Searle, a dancer (since dead), who married the broth- 
er of Sir Gilbert Hcathcote ; and our third for the 
pretty cjubonpoint and ripe little black head of Miss 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 345 

Lupino, since Mrs. Noble, whose clever self and hus- 
band may dancing preserve ! We thought, when she 
married, she had made the fittest choice in the w^orld. 
We hope these declarations, which are the first we 
ever made, are innocent ; especially as we make them 
only to our Companion the reader. They are for 
nobody else to hear. We speak in a stage whisper. 
Our theatrical passion, at present, as he well knows, 
is for Madame Pasta ; and we shall proceed, as we 
did in the other cases, to show our gratitude for the 
pleasure she gives us, by doing her all the good in our 
power, and not letting her know a word on the sub- 
ject. If this is not a disinterested passion, we know 
not what is. 

A word or two on our English manner of dancing 
in private : our quadrilles and country dances. A 
fair friend of ours, whenever she has an objection to 
make to the style of a person's behavior, says, " he 
requires a good shaking." This is what may be said 
of most of the performers in our ball-rooms, particu- 
larly the male. Our gentlemen dancers forget the 
part they assume on all other occasions, as encour- 
agers and payers of compliment; and seem, as if in 
despair of equalling their fair friends, they had no 
object but to get through the dance undetected. The 
best thing they do for their partner is to hand her an 
ice or a lemonade ; the very going for which appears 
to be as great a refreshment to them as the taking it 
is to the other. When the dance is resumed all their 
gravity returns. They look very cut and dry, and 
succinct ; jog along with an air of inditlerence, and 
leave the vivacity of the young lady to shift for itself. 



34^ THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

The most self-satisfied male dancer we ever saw, was 
one who, being contented with his own legs, could 
never take his eyes off them, but seemed eternally 
congratulating them and himself that they were fit to 
be seen. The next thing to this, is to be always 
thinking of the figure ; which, indeed, is the main 
consideration both of gentlemen and ladies. Where 
there is anything beyond, the ladies have it, out and 
out. The best private dancer we know among the 
male sex, is one who makes it his business to attend 
to his partner ; to set off with her as if she were a part 
of his pleasure, and to move among the others as if 
there were such things in the world as companion- 
ship, and a sense of it. And this he does with equal 
spirit and modesty. Our readers may know of more 
instances, and may help to furnish them ; but the 
reverse is assuredly the case in general. Perhaps it 
was not so in the livelier times of our ancestors, when 
taxation had not forced us to think so much of" num- 
ber one ; " and the general knowledge, that is pre- 
paring a still better era, had not unsettled the minds 
of all classes of people as to their individual j^reten- 
sions. Perhaps, also, dress makes a difference. Men 
may have been more confident in cloaks and doub- 
lets than in the flaps and horse-collars of the present 
day. To get up a dance on the sudden, nowadays, 
on the green lawn, would look ridiculous on the men's 
part. At least, they feel as if it would ; and this 
would help to make it so. On the other hand, a set 
of gallant apprentices in their caps and doublets, or 
of wits and cavaliers in their mantles and plumage, 
had all the world before them, for action or for grace ; 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 347 

and a painter could put them on canvas with no det- 
riment to the scenery. We are far from desiring to 
bring back those distinctions. It is very possible for 
an apprentice nowadays to know twice as much as a 
cavalier ; and we would have no distinctions at all but 
between spirit and spirit. But a dress disadvanta- 
geous to everybody, is good for nothing but to increase 
other disadvantages. Above all, a little more spirit 
in our mode of dancing, and a little more of the 
dancing itself, without the formality of regular balls, 
would do us good, and give our energies a fillip on 
the side of cheerfulness. Families and intimate 
friends would find themselves benefited in health and 
spirits, perhaps to an extent of which they have no 
conception, by setting apart an evening or so in the 
v^eek for a dance among themselves. If we have not 
mudi of '• the poetry of motion " among us, v^'e may 
have plenty of the motion itself, which is the healthy 
part of it ; and the next best performer to such a one 
as we have described is he who gives himself up to 
the pleasure and sociality of the moment, whether 
a good dancer or not. 
1828. 



348 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 



RECOLLECTIONS OF OLD ACTORS. 

THE removal of our place of publication to Brydg- 
es Street has reminded us, that many years ago 
we began writing theatricals at the house two doors 
from us, where the paper (The News) is still pub- 
lished in which we made our debut. May it live for- 
ever ! We rejoice in its neighborhood, and hope it 
is not sorry for ours. It must now be nearly thirty 
years since we first wrote articles in the newspapers. 
We were then in our boyhood, or rather lad-hood. 
Not many years short of that period, we adventured 
on the perilous task of criticism ; and here we are 
again, in the same street, almost on the same spot, 
occupied with a new paper,* and pursuing the old 

♦ The Tatler, a literary and theatrical paper, which Hunt edited from Septem- 
ber 4, 1S30, to February 14, 1832. " It was a very little work," he writes, in his 
Autobiography, " consisting but of four folio pages; but it was a daily publica- 
tion. I did it all myself, except when too ill ; and illness seldom hindered me 
either from supplying the review of a book, going every night to the play, or 
writing the notice of the play the same night at the printing-office. The conse- 
quence was, that work, slight as it looked, nearly killed me ; for it never pros- 
pered beyond the coterie of play-going readers, to whom it was almost ex- 
clusively known ; and I was sensible of becoming weaker and poorer every day. 
When I came home at night, often at morning, I used to feel as if I could 
hardly speak ; and for a year and a half afterwards a certain grain of fatigue 
seemed to pervade my limbs, which I thought would never go off. Such, never- 
theless, is a habit of mind, if it be but cultivated, that my spirits never seemed 
better, nor did I ever write theatricals so well, as in the pages of this most un- 
remunerating speculation." According to Sir Thomas N. Talfourd, Leigh Hunt 
gave theatrical criticism a place in modern literature. "In criticism, thus just 
and picturesque," says Sir Thomas, "Mr. Hunt has never been approached; 
and the wonder is, that instead of falling off with the art of acting, he even grew 
richer ; for the articles of the Tatler, equalling tliose of tlie Examiner i;i niceness 
of discrimination, are superior to them in depth and coloring." — Talfourd's 
Critical and Miscellaneous Writings, article On the Late William Hazlitt. — Ed. 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 349 

track. It makes us feel as if we were beginning life 
over again. 

Dniry Lane Theatre is not the same identical 
Drury Lane it was then. It is on the same spot, but 
its body has been altered. It is the old friend with 
a new face. Covent Garden has experienced the 
same rejuvenescence. Alas ! why cannot actors and 
play-goers grow young again too ! Why cannot they 
be old friends with new faces, — the interior spirit 
the same, but the body remoulded ! How patiently 
one would stand to have the scaffold set up round 
about us, while the little genii (whoever they were 
that acted the part of bricklayers) should pursue 
their task of restoration, elevating one's front, extend- 
ing the wings, and new glazing those dhnmed win- 
dows, the eyes ! Then to take down the scaflbldi ng ; 
and like the statue of Memnon, we would sing at the 
touch of morning. 

It is a pity that some such thing cannot take place, 
for the sake of those that particularly desire it. Rab- 
elais says that he was sure he must have been the 
son of a king, because nobody had more princely 
inclinations. We incline, in the same manner, to be 
so young in our feelings, and to desire such a good 
long life before us to do a world of things in, that 
it seems as if we had a right to it. Mortality is a 
good provision, considering that the world has not 
come to its state of enjoyment, and that people in 
general, by the time they are forty, hardly know 
what to do with their Sundays : but an exception 
might be made, we think, in favor of those who 
could occupy all their hours some way or other for 



350 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

a hundred years to come, and who have not yet got 
over their love even of gingerbread. It will take 
us at least twenty years longer before we arrive at 
an indifference to lemon-cake. A " book of pic- 
tures " we cannot conceive the possibility of not 
caring for ; and as to the bright visions of nymphs, 
and goddesses, and Miss Smith, which filled our 
dreams, sleeping and waking, do we not take Mad- 
ame Pasta for the very personification of truth? and 
did we not go seven times to see Miss Inverarity, 
because she has the very voice of cheerful girlhood, 
high and trusting, and we are sure, while we are 
hearing her, that there is one person among the 
audience of her own age? Did we, and do we 
not believe in the marvels of Cinderella, just as much 
as if we had come ten minutes ago, from reading 
the little gilt story-book on a school step? And did 
not the dance of the nymphs with torches appear to 
us as if a page out of Ovid had become true? Have 
we not, in short, faith infinite, hope, — we dare to 
add charity ; yea, even more than we had at sophis- 
ticate seventeen, when people are for being some- 
thing diflerent from what they are? We beg leave 
to say, our age \'s> fifteen; we have run the great 
circle, and come round to it: and we think it a lit- 
tle hard that we are forced to look so much older. 

There is scarcely any one performer remaining at 
Drury Lane of all that we remember when we first 
began writing theatricals. We are not sure there is 
even one. Liston and Dovvton came soon, but we 
recollect the debuts of both \ — of the former cer- 
tainly. Farren is quite a modern, and Harley. 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 



o:) 



Mrs. Orger made her appearance years afterwards, 
and we have none of the then old ladies, Mrs. 
Sparks, Mrs. Mattocks, Miss Pope. The reigning 
women then were, Miss Pope, with her precise bit 
of a voice, and genuine humor, — Mrs. Mattocks, 
who had a never-failing recipe of a sudden flash of 
laughter, starting out of an acrid face ; — the beau- 
tiful and good-natured Mrs. Powell, with her honeyed 
tones (those v/ho recollect them surely must do 
something for her in her old age) ; — Miss Murray 
(afterwards Mrs. Henry Siddons), with her sweet 
voice and eyes, the latter a little too rolling; — Mrs. 
Henry Johnstone, a slight, handsome creature, with a 
formidable power of looking vixenish ; — Miss Dun- 
can, nov/ Mrs. Davison, long a most clever actress 
with a liberal style ; Mrs. Jordan, delightful Mrs. 
Jordan, whose voice did away the cares of the whole 
house, before they saw her come in, and Mrs. Sid- 
dons, the mighty mother of the pall and sceptre. 
We always remember her as the mother, — as some- 
thing elderly, and even gaunt. We suspect that, 
with all her talents, she was, by nature, something 
of a dowager, compared with such a queen as Pasta. 

Mrs. Gibbs was flourishing at that time, but she 
was at the Haymarket, very good, and very pretty 
in chambermaids and black-mittened rustics. 

There also was Mrs. Mills, a tight little actress, 
whose tightness led her to play drummers ; and 
Madame Storace, loud, free, and clever, with a reedy 
voice ; and Mrs. Crouch, once lovely, then going the 
way of all forsaken Princes' mistresses ; and Mrs. 
Billington, the favorite great singer, looking like a 



353 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

handsome apoplexy, and straining her throat till you 
thought she would have one ; and Mrs. Bland, the 
favorite little singer, with a voice like her name, 
and a short, thick person, and dark face to match, 
v^hich her sweet ballads made ever welcome. What 
troubles did not all these people have ! What pleas- 
ures too ! And how much pleasure did they not 
give ! 

With respect to the men, we begin to think that 
Mathews was at Drury Lane in those days ; but we 
are not sure. We remember him at the Haymarket, 
where Liston came out. Elliston was the great man 
at Drury, and John Kemble at Covent Garden. We 
used to be heretical enough to think the former the 
greater natural genius of the two, though of a less 
heroicai turn for tragedy ; and we think so still. As 
a cordial and dashing comedian, in first-rate charac- 
ters, we never saw him equalled. No gallant knew 
how to make love as he did. He had a fervor and a 
breath, as well as a cheerful eye and a most urgent 
voice, that made his energy of some consequence. 

Lewis surpassed him in airiness ; but there was no 
gentleman comedian who comprised so many quali- 
ties of his art as he did, or who could diverge so well 
into those parts of tragedy, which find a connecting 
link with the graver powers of the comedian in their 
gracefulness and humanity. He was the best Wild- 
air, the best Archer, the best Aranza ; and carrying 
the seriousness of Aranza a little further, or making 
him a tragic gentlemaii instead of a comic, he be- 
came the best Mortimer, and even the best Macbeth, 
of any performer who excelled in comedy. When 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 353 

Charles Kemble acts comedy, he gives you the idea 
of an actor who has come out of the chivah-ous part 
of tragedy. It is grace and show that are most natu- 
ral to him, — the ideal of mediocrity. Elliston being 
natural!}^ a comedian, and comedy of the highest class 
demanding a greater sympathy with actual flesh and" 
blood, his tragedy, though less graceful than Charles 
Kemble's, was more natural and cordial. He suffered 
and was shaken more. The other, in his greatest 
grief, is but like the statue of some Apollo Belvedere 
vivified, frowning in beauty, and making a grace of 
his sorrow. The god remains impassive to ordinary 
suffering. Elliston's features were nothing nearly so 
handsome or so finely cut as the others ; but they 
were more sensitive and intelligent. He had i\othing 
of the poetry of tragedy ; the other has the form of it ; 
but Elliston, in Macbeth, could give you something 
of the weak, and sanguine, and misgiving usurper ; 
and in Mortimer, in the Iron Chest, he has moved the 
audience to tears. It ought not to be forgotten, that 
he restored that character to the stage, when John 
Kemble had killed it with his frigidity.* 

The tragedy of this accomplished actor was, how- 
ever, only an elongation, or drawing out, of the graver 
and more sensitive part of his comedy. It was in 
comedy that he was the master. "When Kean ap- 
peared and extinguished Kemble, Elliston seems pru- 
dently to have put out his tragic lamp. In comedy, 
after the death of Lewis, he remained without a rival. 



* For a livel}' and caustic account of the manner in which Kemble performed 
the part of Sir Edward Mortimer, see Cohnan's preface to the first edition of 
The Iron Chest, reprinted in Hotten's edition of Broad Grins. — Ed. 

23 



354 '^^^ WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

He had three distinguished excellences, — dry humor, 
gentlemanly mirth, and fervid gallantry. His fea- 
tures were a little too round, and his person latterly 
became a great deal too much so. But we speak of 
him in his best days. His face, in one respect, was 
of that rare order, which is peculiarly fitted for the 
expression of enjoyment; — it laughed with the eyes 
as well as mouth. His eyes, which were not large, 
grew smaller when he was merry, and twinkled with 
glee and archness ; his smile was full of enjoj'ment ; 
and yet the moment he shook his head with a satirical 
deprecation, or dropped the expression of his face into 
an innuendo, nothing could be dryer or more angular 
than his mouth. There was a generosity in his style, 
both in its greater and smaller points. He understood 
all the little pretended or avowed arts of a gentleman, 
when he was conversing or complimenting, or mak- 
ing love, everything which implied the necessity of 
attention to the other person, and a just, and as it 
were, mutual consciousness of the graces of life on 
his own. His manners had the true uimuet dance 
spirit of gentility, — the knowledge how to give and 
take, with a certain recognition of the merits on either 
side, even in the midst of raillery. And then his 
voice was remarkable for its union of the manly with 
the melodious ; and as a lover, nobody approached 
him. Certainly nobody approached a woman as he 
did. It was the reverse of that preposterous style of 
touch and avoids — that embracing at arms' length, 
and hinting of a mutual touch on the shoulders, — by 
which the ladies and gentlemen of the stage think fit 
to distinguish themselves from the characters they 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 355 

perform, and even the Pollys and Macheaths propi- 
tiate our good opinion. Elliston made out that it was 
no shame to love a woman, and no shame* in her 
to return his passion. He took her hand, he cherished 
it against his bosom, he watched the moving of her 
countenance, he made the space less and less between 
them, and as he at length burst out into some excla- 
mation of " charming ! " or " lovely ! " his voice trem- 
bled, not with weakness, but with the strength and fer- 
vor of its emotion. All the love, on the stage, since 
this (with the exception of Macready's domestic ten- 
derness), is not worth twopence, and fit only to beget 
w^aiters. 

In calling to mind the pleasant hours that have been 
given us by the talents of Elliston, we must not forget 
to mention his defects. In traged}^, for want of a 
strong sympathy with the serious, he sometimes got 
into a commonplace turbulence, and at others put on 
an affected solemnity ; and he was in the habit of 
hawing between his words. The longer he was a 
manager, the worse this habit became. He was not 
naturally inclined to the authoritative ; but having once 
commenced it in order to give weight to his levity, he 
seems to have carried about the habit with him to 
maintain his importance. Unfortunately, he fancied 
that he was never more natural than on these occa- 
sions. He said once, at the table of a friend of ours, 
clapping himself on the knee, and breathing with his 
usual fervor, " Nature-^tc;, sir, is everything-«w .* l-aw 
am always-^ze; natural-rttw." 

Theodore Hook had a ludicrous story of his calling 
upon Elliston at the Surrey Theatre, and having some 



35^ THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

conversation with him in the midst of his managerial 
occupations. In the course of their dialogue, Elliston 
would start in a grand manner from the subject, and 
give some direction to his underlings. He called for 
two of them successively in the following man- 
ner : — 

Elliston — (turning suddenly to the right, and 
breathing with all his fervor). " Night watchman ! " 
— (Enter night watchman, and has a word or two 
spoken to him by the manager.) 

Elliston — (scarcely having resumed the discourse, 
and turning suddenly as before). " Other night 
watchman ! " — (Enter other night watchman, and is 
spoken to in like manner. The histrionic sovereign 
then resumes his discourse with Mr. Hook, with 
tranquil dignity). 

We had an hour's conversation with him once at 
Drur}' Lane ; during w^iich, in answer to some obser- 
vation we made respecting the quantity of business he 
had to get through, he told us, that he had formed 
himself " on the model of the Grand Pensionary De 
Witt." Coming with him out of the theatre, we 
noticed the present portico in Brydges Street, which 
had just been added to the front, and said that it 
seemed to have started up like magic. " Yes, sir," 
said he, " energy is the thing : — I no sooner said it, 
than it was done : — it was a Bonaparte blow." 

There was real energy in all this, and the right 
animal spirits, as well as an innocent pedantry: nor 
did it hinder him from being the delightful comedian 
we have described. He could not have been it, had 
he not been pleased with himself: and a little super- 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 357 

fluons self-complacency off the stage was to be par- 
doned him. A successful actor would be a phenome- 
non of modesty if he were not one of the vainest 
of men. Nobody gets such applause as he does, and 
in such an intoxicating way, except a conqueror en- 
tering a city. 

Then there was Bannister (now enjoying the otium 
CU771 be7iignitate)^ at the top of another line of com- 
edy, not omitting homely domestic tragedy. His 
Walter, in the Children in the Wood, was as good, 
in its way, as Mrs. Siddons's Lady Macbeth ; and his 
Job Thornberry, in John Bull, was as superior to 
Fawcett's, as a brazier is to his brass. Bannister 
was one of those actors who give you the idea of 
being genuine honest men, and make you happy. 
Fawcett was excellent also in his line, which was 
that of impudent servants and gambling pedagogues. 
No Pangloss and Caleb Qiiotem have ever been so 
good as his. The other men were John Kemble, 
the very statue of an old Roman set walking ; Pope, 
who had a dashing tragic style, but was monoto- 
nous, and was always lifting up his arms, like St. 
Paul preaching at Athens ; Raymond, a melodra- 
matic sort of actor, more intelligent than any one 
of the present, though harsh ; Henry Johnstone, an- 
other, of a more ideal cast, and more quietly effective, 
though his handsomeness made him somewhat fop- 
pish ; Murra}', the father of Miss Murray, a very sensi- 
ble and pleasing actor in old gentlemen ; Powell, the 
last of the declamatory, white-handkerchief mourners 
of an older school ; Lewis, the essence of lightness, 
of whim, of the mercurial (we have often described 



358 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

him : * he is not to be replaced) ; Munden,who made 
every trifle of importance, and masticated his grins till 
they were irresistible; Simons, the most filching of 
filchers ; Emery, a perfect Yorkshireman, startling in 
rustic tragedy ; Wewitzer, the only Canton ; Irish 
Johnstone, of most lackadaisical potency, and a good 
singer ; Blanchard, the best Marquis de Grand Cha 
teau we have seen, a most petulant and palsied Signor, 
— still extant, and much, in other things, as he was ; 
and afterwards came Cooke, who took almost all the 
ideal out of tragedy, but put some good stutT into 
it, and was a painfully good Sir Pertinax ; then Mas- 
ter Betty, the plaything of declamation, whose clev- 
erness deserved a better fate ; and after an interval, 
with many others still flourishing, Kean, the finest 
actor we ever beheld. 

We ought to mention Robert Palmer, a dogged kind 
of natural actor, especially in characters of sturdy im- 

* Let the reader picture to himself a slight, youthful figure, of middle height, 
with sprightly eyes half shut with laughing, a mouth that showed its teeth a little 
when it smiled ; restless, and yet gentlemanly manners ; a pair of gloved hands 
that went through all the varieties of illustration that hands can insinuate, and 
thrust the point of a joke into your ribs with a finger, to the exclamation of "you 
dog ! " — light airy voice, harmonizing with the look of the face, often out of breath 
with spirits, and reposing sometimes on long lower tones of ludicrous contrast ; a 
head full of nods, and becks, and flutterings ; and lastly, a habit of finishing his 
sentences with indescribable exclamations ai hoo ! z.nd. phoo ! and a look of pouting 
astonishment, as if nothing remained on earth to wonder at but his triumphant 
foppery, and he joined the astonishment in order to be in the fashion. We have 
nothing like it nowadays : nothing so thin, so airy, so gentlemanly, so eternally 
young : for Lewis was the very same to'the last. His slenderness and his animal 
spirits preserved his look of juvenility to the moment when he took leave of the 
stage. It was in the Copper Captain, with his epaulets dancing on his shoulders. 
He came forward at the end of the play to take leave, and for the first time in his 
life, perhaps, when on the stage, the good-natured actor shed tears and caused 
them. His gay voice failed him as he told the public that " for thirty years he 
had not once incurred their displeasure : " and he was obliged to put up hU 
cocked hat before his face to hide his emotion. 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 359 

pudence or sottishness ; but we knew him only in his 
dechne. John Pahner was before our time. So was 
Miss Farren : and Suett was before our critical days, 
though we remember him well, with his quaint, thin 
manner, and his little slippery laugh. 

We heard an exquisite anecdote of Suett the 
other day. It is not much to tell, but it is highly 
characteristic. Suett, it must be observed, was both 
one of the drollest and one of the simplest of man- 
kind. His relish of a joke was infinite, but he gave 
rise to many a one unconsciously ; and hung upon the 
world, in all things, betwixt a laugh and an aston- 
ishment. It was he that said when he was dying, 
" O dear ! O dear ! Bobby going to die ! Here's a 
pretty job ! Was there ever seen the like?" 

Suett one day took it into his head, gravely, 
to teach clergymen how to read the Lord's Prayer ! 
We forget the name of the public house from wdiich 
his card of announcement was addressed, but it ran 
in some such manner as the following, and was in 
poi'fect good faith : — 

" Clergymen taught to read the Lord's Prayer^ 

By Robert Suett, Comedian. 

Address to the Cat and Feathers.^ No, 21 Drury 

La7ze" 

1831. 



360 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 



CLARENDON'S HISTORY OF THE 
REBELLION. 

HAVING been much interested by a re-perusal 
of Clarendon's History of the Rebellion, I sit 
down to look through it again with the reader. 
My object is not to write a criticism, still less to enter 
into a review of the period to which the book relates, 
but simply to point out and remark a little upon some 
of the most curious passages. Having felt a pleasure, 
I wish to impart it, and shall fancy myself in the 
reader's company as with a friend. 

The edition I make use of is a foreign one, printed 
at Basil, which is not likely to be read in England: 
so that I can only refer to the number of the books 
without noticing the pages. 

The work opens with an account of Prince 
Charles's romantic journey into Spain, and the way 
in which James the First was brought to consent to it. 
This has been copied by Hume; but though Hume 
relates the particulars more directly relating to the 
journey, such as the bullying conduct of Bucking- 
ham, and the ridiculous lamentations of the King, 
who threw himself on his bed, weeping and wailing, 
and exclaiming that he should lose " Baby Charles," 
he has omitted one or two passages highly charac- 
teristic of the courtiers of those times. I observe, by 
the way, that Hunw; represents Baby Charles (who 
was then a young man in the twenty-third year of his 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 361 

age) as having tears iu his eyes when his father 
wished him to give up the journey: but this is not 
mentioned by Chirendon. The appeHation of Baby, 
and the wilful infirmities to which Royalty is subject, 
appear to have beguiled the historian of his usual 
precision. 

Sir Francis Cottington, afterwards Lord Cotting- 
ton, was a courtier of real courage for that period ; 
yet, see how he behaves at an unexpected proposi- 
tion : " Cottington," said James, " here is Baby 
Charles and Stenny " — (an appellation he always 
used of and towards the Duke) — " who have a great 
mind to go by post to Spain to fetch home the In- 
fanta, and will have but two more in their company. 
What think you of the journey?" He (Cottington) 
often protested since, that when he heard the King, 
he fell iiito such a trembling- that he coitld hardly 
speak. But when the King commanded him to an- 
swer him, what he thought of the journey, he replied, 
he could not think well of it, &c. — Book I. 

This was the courage of a great courtier. Now 
see his delicacy. Cottington, to this offence against 
the Duke, subsequently added another ; upon which 
Buckingham, after his usual open manner, vowed re- 
venge on him. The courtier applied to him to know 
whether, by a proper obsequiousness, he could not be 
restored to his Grace's favor ; and being answered in 
the negative, said, he at least hoped that his Grace 
would not condescend to gain by his loss ; and so re- 
quested him to return a set of hangings he had pre- 
sented to him " in hope of his future favor," and 
which cost him eight hundred pounds. The Duke 



362 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

answered " he was right ; " and the hangings were re- 
stored, or at least the amonnt of their vakie ; together 
with some sums of money, which Cottington had laid 
out, by his order, for jewels and pictures. — Ibid. 

Cottington appears to liave been bold enough with 
everybody except his first master ; but he knew his 
men, even when he was most daring. He most likely 
ventures to behave to Buckingham in this manner, 
out of a confidence that it was the safest thing he 
could do to a man of his temper, where his advances 
were not accepted. It was an avowal of meanness 
and inferiority, as well as a compliment to the other's 
spirit ; which tended to put him at a pardonable dis- 
tance from a lofty but not ungenerous temper. After 
the death of Buckingham, Cottington got into power. 
There were none of his old masters to overawe him. 
He felt secure of Charles and his weakness ; and 
having a turn for drollery as well as artifice, did not 
scruple to play a strange trick upon Laud, whom all 
the lay part of the government disliked. It was so 
contrived as at onfce to turn to their advantage, and 
disconcert the Archbishop with the King. The 
whole of the story is worth copying, inasmuch as it 
involves a Naboth-vineyard anecdote of Charles the 
First such as Hume does not venture to rejDeat. " The 
King, who was excessively affected to hunting (says 
Clarendon) and the sports of the field, had a great 
desire to make a great joark for red as well as fallow 
deer, between Richmond and Hampton Court, where 
he had large wastes of his own and great parcels of 
wood, which made it very fit for the use he designed 
it to ; but as some parishes had commons in those 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 363 

wastes, so many gentlemen and farmers had good 
houses and good farms intermingled with those 
wastes, of their own inheritance, or for their lives or 
years ; and without taking of them into the park, it 
would not be of the largeness, or for the use proposed. 
His Majesty desired to purchase those lands, and was 
very willing to buy them upon higher terms than the 
people could sell them at to anybody else, if they had 
occasion to part with them ; and thought it no un- 
reasonable thing, upon those terms, to expect this 
from his subjects ; and so he employed his own sur- 
veyor and others of his officers to treat with the own- 
ers, many whereof were his own tenants, whose 
farms would at last expire. 

'^ The major part of the people were in a short 
time prevailed with, but many very obstinately re- 
fused ; and a gentleman who had the best estate, with 
a convenient house and gardens, would by no means 
part with it ; and the King being as earnest to com- 
pass it, it made a great noise, as if the King would 
take away men's estates at his own pleasure." [As 
if he would not ! What else was it that he desired to 
do?] "The Bishop of London, who was Treas- 
urer, and the Lord Cottington, Chancellor of the Ex- 
chequer, were, from the first entering upon it, very 
averse from the design ; not only for the murmur of 
the people, but because the purchase of the land, and 
the making a brick wall about so large a parcel of 
ground (for it is near ten miles about), would cost a 
greater sum of money than they could easily provide, 
or they thought ought to be sacrificed on such an oc- 
casion ; and the Lord Cottington (who was more so- 



364 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

licitecl by the country people, and heard most of their 
murmurs) took the business most to heart, and en- 
deavored by all the ways he could, and by frequent 
importunities, to divert his Majesty from pursuing it, 
and put all delays he w^ell could do in the bargains 
w^hich were to be made, till the King grew very angry 
with him, and told him he was resolved to go through 
with it, and had already caused brick to be burned, 
and much of the wall to be built on his own land. 
Upon which Cottington thought fit to acquiesce. 

" The building of the wall before the people con- 
sented to part with their land, or their common, 
looked to them as if by degrees they should be shut 
out from both, and increased the murmur and noise 
of the people who were not concerned, as well as of 
them who were ; and it was too near London not to 
be the common discourse./ The Archbishop (who 
desired exceedingly that the King should be possessed 
as much of the hearts of the people as was possible, 
at least that they should have no just cause to com- 
plain), meeting with it, resolved to speak to the King 
of it ; which he did ; and received such an answer 
from him, that he thought his Majesty rather not in- 
formed enough of the inconveniences and mischiefs of 
the thing, then positively resolved not to desist from 
it. Whereupon, one day he took the Lord Cottington 
aside (being informed that he disliked it), and, ac- 
cording to his natural custom, spoke with great 
warmth against it, and told him, ' he should do very 
well to give the King good counsel, and withdraw 
him from a resolution in which his honor and jus- 
tice were so much called in question.' Cottington 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 365 

answered him very gravely, ' that the thing designed 
was very lawful, and he thought the King resolved 
very well, since the place lay so conveniently for his 
winter exercise ; and that he should by it not be com- 
pelled to make so long journeys as he used to do in 
that season of the 3'ear for his sport ; and that nobody 
ought to dissuade him from it.' 

" The Archbishop, instead of finding a concurrence 
from him, as he expected, seeing himself reproached 
upon the matter for his opinion, grew into much pas- 
sion, telling him, ' Such men as he would ruin the 
King, and make him lose the affections of his sub- 
jects ; that, for his own part, as he had begun, so he 
woidd go on, to persuade the King from proceeding 
in so ill a counsel ; and that he hoped it would appear 
who had been his counsellor.' Cottington, glad to 
see him so soon hot, and resolved to inflame him 
more, very calmly replied to him, ' that he thought 
a man could not, with a good conscience, hinder the 
King from pursuing his resolutions ; and that it could 
not but proceed from want of affection to his person ; 
and that he was not sure that it misfht not be hio-h 
treason.' The other, upon the wildness of his dis- 
course, in great anger asked him, 'Why.'* from 
v/hence had he received that doctrine.^' He said, 
with the same temper, ' They who did not wish the 
King's health, could not love him ; and they who 
went about to hinder his taking recreation v^'diich 
preserved his health, might be thought, for aught he 
knew, guilty of the highest crimes.' Upon which 
the Archbishop, in great rage and with many re- 
proaches, left him ; and either presently, or upon the 



366 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

next opportunity, told the King, ' that he now knew 
who was his great counsellor for making the park ; 
and that he did not wonder that men durst not repre- 
sent any arguments to the contrary, or let his Majesty 
know how much he suffered in it, when such prin- 
ciples in divinity and law were laid down to terrify 
them,' and so recounted the conference he had with 
the Lord Cottington, bitterly inveighing against him 
and his doctrines, mentioning him with all the sharp 
reproaches imaginable, and beseeching his Majesty 
'that his counsel might not prevail with him;' tak- 
ing some pains to make his conclusions appear very 
false and ridiculous. 

" The King said no more than but, ' My Lord, you 
are deceived : Cottington is too hard for you. Upon 
my word, he hath not only dissuaded me more, and 
eiven more reason asrainst this business than all the 
men in England have done, but hath really obstructed 
the work, by not doing his duty as I commanded him, 
for which I have been very much displeased with 
him. You see how unjustly your passion hath trans- 
ported you.' By which reprehension he found how 
much he had been abused, and resented it accord- 
ingly." — /did. 

Hume ought not to have omitted this story. Every- 
thing connected with it deserves attention. In the 
first place, even Clarendon has thought proper to tell 
it, though he contrives to divide the interest as much 
as possible with Cottington's humor. This is a proof 
how much noise it must have made ; and how dif- 
ficult the author found it, in that age, to leave it out 
of his history. The noise, indeed, is evident from 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 367 

every part of it; and what is remarkable, the cour- 
tiers agreed with the people. The design was not 
only unjust to others ; it was inconvenient to them- 
selves. The Chancellor of the Exchequer was puz- 
zled for money for it. Laud, who had the direction 
of the King's conscience, and was already disliked by 
all classes for his arbitrary principles, was afraid he 
should be thought to encourage it. Something also 
is to be allowed him on the score of scandal to the 
Bible. Here was the scene of Naboth's vineyard re- 
opened. The Archbishop finds himself in the sit- 
uation of Nathan. Cottington hates him for his 
officiousness, perhaps envies him the chance of turn- 
ing the King's intentions ; and the King first leaves 
him to suppose that he had not made up his mind, 
and afterwards is not sorry to have an opportunity of 
rebuking him. His Majesty had been compelled, no 
doubt, to take to himself much of the reproach 
which the Prelate, in the course of his wrath, had 
vented against the supposed adviser. Finally, the 
project appears to have been obstinately gone through 
with, and there is no knowing how much of the sub- 
sequent bitterness between the King and his subjects, 
how much of the general indignation, or of the vin- 
dictiveness and apparent cruelty of individuals, may 
have been owing to this single circumstance. 

Of tliis Lord Cottington, who was an amusing 
person, the reader shall have all that remains to be 
jtold. He followed the fortunes of Charles the Second 
jduring the civil wars ; and in proportion as the Stu- 
arts grew weak, appears to have become more impu- 
dent and entertaining. The King, in his exile, alarmed 



368 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

his court by an intention to make Colonel Windham 
Secretary of State ; " an honest gentleman," says 
Clarendon, " whose best pretension to the office was 
that his wife had been his Majesty's nurse." — "One 
day, the Lord Cottington, when the Chancellor (Clar- 
endon himself) and some others were present, told 
the King, very gravely (according to his custom, 
who never smiled when he made othevs merry), 
' that he had a humble suit to him on behalf of an old 
servant of his father ; and whom he assured him upon 
his knowledge, his. father loved as well as he did any 
man of that condition ; and that he had been many 
years one of his falconers in England : ' and there- 
upon enlarged himself (as he could do very well, in 
all the terms of that science), to show how very skil- 
ful he was in that art. The King asked him ' what 
he would have done for him?' Cottington told him 
' it was very true that his Majesty kept no falconers, and 
the poor man was grown old, and could not ride as 
he used to do ; but that he was a very honest man, 
and could read very well, and had as audible a voice 
as any man need to have ; and therefore besought his 
Majesty, that he would make him his Chaplain;' 
which, speaking with so composed a countenance, 
and somewhat of earnestness, the King looked upon 
him with a smile to know what he meant ; when he, 
with the same gravity, assured him the ' falconer 
was in all respects as fit to be his Chaplain as Col- 
onel Windham was to be Secretary of State ; ' which 
so surprised the King, w4io had never spoken to him 
of the matter, all that were present not being able to 
abstain from laughing, that his Majesty was somewhat 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 369 

out of countenance ; and this being merrily told by 
some of the standers-by, it grew to be a story in all 
companies, and did readily divert the King from the 
purpose, and made the other so much ashamed of 
pretending to it, that there was no more discourse of 
\tr—BookXIL 

Cottington was of a Roman Catholic family. When 
he was in Spain on a former occasion,- he was recon- 
ciled to the Church of Rome, and went regularly to 
mass ; but on his return to England, he resumed his 
misconformity with the Protestants. It was con- 
venient to his views of office. During the exile of 
Charles the Second he and Clarendon were sent by 
that prince in an embassy to the King of Spain, and 
Cottington, now aged and gouty, took the opportunity 
of "patching up his old body for heaven," and dying 
in the family faith. 

He died not long after, at Valladolid, where he had 
taken up his abode for the remainder of his days. 
" He was a very wise niaii^' says Clarendon, " by 
the great and long experience he had in business of 
all kinds, and by his natural temper, which was not 
liable to any transport of anger, or any other passion, 
but could bear contradiction, and even reproach, 
without being moved or put out of his way ; for he 
was very steady in pursuing what he proposed to 
himself, and had courage not to be frightened with 
any opposition. It is true, he was illiterate as to the 
grammar of any language, or the principle of any 
science ; but by his perfect understanding of the 
Spanish (which he spoke as a Spaniard), the French, 
and Italian languages, and having read very much of 

24 



370 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

them, lie could not be said to be ignorant in any part 
of learning, divinity only excepted. He had a fine' 
and extraordinary understanding in the nature of 
beasts and birds, and above all in all kinds of planta- 
tions, and arts of husbandry. He was born a gentleman 
both by his father and mother, his father having a 
pretty entire seat near Breton in Somersetshire, worth 
above two hundred pounds a year, which had de- 
scended from father to son for many hundred years, 
and is still in possession of his elder brother's chil- 
dren, the family having been always Roman Cath- 
olics. His mother was a Stafford, nearly allied to 
Sir Edward Stafford, who was Vice-Chamberlain to 
Queen Elizabeth, and had been Ambassador in 
France ; by whom this gentleman was brought up, 
and was gentleman of his horse, and left one of his 
executors of his will, and by him recommended Sir 
Robert Cecil, Secretary of State ; who preferred him 
to Sir Charles Cornwallis, when he went Ambassador 
into Spain, in the beginning of the reign of King 
James ; where he remained for the space of eleven 
or twelve years, in the condition of Secretary or 
Agent, without ever returning into England in all 
that time. He made by his own virtue and industry 
a pretty fair estate, of which, though the revenue did 
not exceed above four thousand pounds by the year, 
yet he had four very good houses, and three parks, 
the value of which was not reckoned into that com- 
putation. He lived very nobly, well served and at- 
tended in his house ; had a better stable for horses, 
better provisions for sports (especially of hawks, in 
which he took great delight), than most of his quality, 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 37 1 

and lived always with great splendor ; for though he 
loved money very well, and did not ivarily enough 
consider the circumstances of getting it^ he spent it 
well all ways but in giving ; which he did not aflect. 
He was of an excellent humor, and very easy to live 
with ; and under a grave countenance covered the 
most of mirth, and caused more than any man of the 
most pleasant disposition. He never used anybody 
ill ; but used many very well for whom he had no re- 
gard. His greatest fault was, that he could dissemble 
and make men believe that he loved them very well, 
when he cared not for them. He had not very tender 
affections, nor bowels apt to yearn at all objects which 
deserved compassion. He was heartily tired of the 
world, and no man was more willing to die ; which 
is an argument that he had peace of his conscience. 
He left behind him a greater esteem of his parts, than 
love to his person." — Book XIII. 

This is a portrait of a clever, selfish, entertaining 
man of the world, whose success, after all, is a poor 
business. By his own knavery and folly to boot 
(for this " virtuous " money-getter, and " very wise 
man," was evidently not without both in their way), 
he gets rid of his good opinion of other men, and 
his real relish of life; eats and drinks himself into a 
good tormenting gout ; and before he dies, is heartily 
weary of the world. His "peace of con'science " 
(which he had a perfect right to, considering the way 
he was brought up) means that he had little or no 
conscience of any sort ; and what little he had, he 
satisfies, by reposing it " in the bosom of an infalli- 
ble church," who, it must be confessed, owes her 



372 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

children a good deal of indulgence, in return for the 
pains she takes to spoil them.* 

The wisdom and virtue of this courtier appear to 
have done little good to the character of his brother 
Ambassador. 

Of the Earl of Arundel, v^ho w^as sent by Charles 
against the Scots at the beginning of the troubles, 
Clarendon gives the following pithy character : " He 
did not love the Scots, he did not love the Puri- 
tans ; which qualifications were much allayed by an- 
other negative ; he did not much love anybody else." 
— Book II. Perhaps the author might have added 
something like v^'hat a friend of ours introduced at 
the end of a similar character drawn of a modern 
poet: — "He did not like meT Arundel, though a 
court officer, was of a different way of thinking from 
Hyde on many points, and had probabl}^ crossed hin> 
with some of his stately manners. A good deal of 
personal pique is evident here and there in the writ- 
ings of this statesman. Hume speaks ill of Arun- 
del's talents. He seems to have been a selfish man, 



* Here is Fuller's character of Cottington. 

"Sir Francis Cottington, Knight, was born nigh Mere, in this county [Wilt- 
shire], and bred, when a youth, under Sir Stafford. He lived so long in 

Spain, till he made the garb and gravity of that nation become his, and became 
him. He raised himself by his natural strength, without any artificial advan- 
tage : having his parts above his learning, his experience, and (some will say) his 
success above all : so that at the last he became Chancellor of the Exchequer, 
baron of Hanworth in Middlesex, and (upon the resignation of Doctor Juxon) 
Lord Treasurer of England, gaining also a very great estate. But what he got in 
a few years he lost in fewer days, since our civil wars, when the Parliament was 
pleased (for reasons only known to themselves) to make him one of tlie ex- 
amples of their severity, excluding him pardon, but permitting his departure 
beyond the seas, where he died about the year 1650." — The Worthies of Eng- 
land, Nuttall's Ed., vol. 3, p. 329. — Ed. 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 373 

for he withdrew from the troubles, and lived and died 
in Italy. He w^as the possessor of the marbles known 
under his name. 

The following anecdote of Windebank, Secretary 
of State, a favorer of the Papists, would have shone 
in Bandello : " I remember," says Clarendon, " one 
story brought into the house concerning him, that ad- 
ministered some mirth. A messenger (I think his 
name was Newton), w4io principally attended the ser- 
vice of apprehending priests, came one day to him in 
his garden, and told him that he had brought with him 
a priest, a stirring and active person, whom he had 
apprehended that morning ; and desired to know to 
what prison he should carry him. The Secretary 
sharply asked him whether he would never give over 
this bloodthirsty humor.? and in great anger calling 
him a knave, and taking the warrant from him by 
which he had apprehended him, departed without giv- 
ing any other direction. The messenger, appalled, 
thought the priest was some person in favor, and 
therefore took no more care of him, but suffered him 
to depart. The priest, freed from this fright, went 
securely to his lodgings, and within two or three days 
was arrested for debt, and carried in execution to 
prison. Shortly after Secretary Windebank sent for 
the messenger, and asked him ' what was become 
of the priest he had at such a time brought before 
him?' He told him, 'that he conceived his Honor 
was offended with the apprehension of him, and 
therefore he had looked no farther after him.' The 
Secretary, in much passion, told him ' the dischar- 
ging a priest was no light matter, and that if he speed- 



374 '^HE W:SHING-CAP PAPERS. 

ily found him not, he should answer the default with 
his life ; that the priest was a dangerous fellow, and 
must not escape in that fashion.' The messenger, 
besides his natural inclination to that exercise, terri- 
fied^with these threats, left no means untried for the 
discovery, and at last heard where the man was in ex- 
ecution in prison ; thither he went and demanded the 
priest (who was not there known to be such) as his 
prisoner formerly, and escaped from liira ; and by 
virtue of his first warrant took him again into cus- 
tody, and immediately carried him to the Secretary ; 
and within a few days after the priest was discharged, 
and at liberty. The jailer, in whose custody he had 
been put for debt, was arrested by the parties grieved, 
and he again sued the messenger, who appealed for 
justice to the House of Commons against the Secre- 
tary."— ^^^/^ ///. 

From this and other charges, Windebank fled the 
kingdom. He was a creature of Laud's. 

HOW^ TO BE PREVAILED UPON TO ERADICATE 

Bishops. — The House prepared a very short bill '' for 
the utter eradication of Bishops, Deans, and Chap- 
ters ; with all Chancellors, and officials, and all of- 
ficers, and other persons belonging to either of them ; " 
which they prevailed Sir Edward Deering, a man 
very opposite to all their designs (but a man of levity 
and vanity, easily flattered by being commended), to 
present into the House ; which he did from the gal- 
lery, with the two verses in Ovid, the application 
whereof was his greatest ?notiv2 : " — 

" Cuncta prius tentauda ; sed immedicabile vulnus 
Ense recidendum est, ne pars sincera trahatur." 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 

[I tried whatever in the godhead lay ; 

But gangrened members must be lopt away, 

Before the nobler parts are tainted to decay. — Dryden.] 



375 



A good thing was said of this upon a bill by Lord 
Falkland : " It was so late every day before the 
House was resumed (the Speaker commonly leaving 
the chair about nine of the clock, and never resuming 
it till four in the afternoon), that it was very thin ; 
the}- only who prosecuted the bill with impatience 
remaining in the House, and the others who abhorred 
it, growing Weary of so tiresome an attendance, left 
the House at dinner-time, and afterwards followed 
their pleasures : so that the Lord Falkland was wont 
to say, ' that they who hated the Bishops, hated them 
worse than the Devil ; and that they who loved them, 
did not love them so well as their dinner.' " — Ibid. 
This is true. But how should thc}^? The dinner 
was the more Episcopalian thing of the two. 

Montrose. — Clarendon says, that when the King 
arrived in Scotland, Montrose came privately to him, 
and informed him, among other particulars, " that the 
Marquis of Hamilton was no lest faulty and false to- 
wards his Majesty than Argyle ; and offered to make 
proof of all in the Parliament; but rather desired to 
have them both made away ; " which he frankly 
offered to do ; but the King, abhorring that expedient, 
though for his own security, advised " that the proofs 
might be prepared for Parliament." — Book IV. The 
following is a note of Hume's upon this passage, ap- 
pended to the 58th chapter of his History : " It is 
not improper to take notice of a mistake committed 



376 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

by Clarendon, much to the disadvantage of this orallant 
nobleman ; that he offered the King, when his Majesty 
was in Scotland, to assassinate Argyle. At the time 
the King was in Scotland, Montrose was confined to 
prison." He refers for his authority. to Rushworth, 
Vol. VI., p. 9S0. Montrose's imprisonment, however, 
does not refute the charge of his having made the 
offer. It only proves that he could not have made it 
in person. Besides, Clarendon does not say that he 
offered to assassinate Argyle, but to have him as- 
sassinated. The additional vsords, '^ which he frank- 
ly offered to do," might indeed be construed other- 
wise ; but not with probability, especially after so 
direct a mention of the offer, enforced upon the read- 
er by marks of quotation. It is observable that 
Clarendon carefully makes use of these marks when- 
ever he repeats the observations of another. Though 
Montrose was imprisoned at that time, he was of an 
active disposition, and might have conveyed the offer 
by another person. Even if Clarendon represented 
him as undertaking to be the assassin himself, the 
time of his liberation might have been contemplated ; 
and the manners of those enraged and vindictive 
times offer nothing very considerable against the like- 
lihood of such a proposal ; Clarendon, for one, clearly 
believed in it, or he would hardly have mentioned the 
proposal without expressing astonishment. At the 
same time it should be mentioned, that Clarendon 
was no friend to the Aiarquis's person, though he 
joined in commending his exploits. He appears to 
have been jealous of him ; at least to have been mor- 
tified tliat Montrose did not pay more deference to his 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 377 

opinion. See Book XII., v/here they have an inter- 
view near the Hague. The best argument in Mon- 
trose's favor might be drawn from his bravery, and 
his open, defying nature ; and yet very brave men in 
those times could condescend to be assassins ; and 
Montrose, with all his gallantry, could play a tricking 
and lying part. There were fanatics on all sides, and 
of all descriptions ; fanatics, too, in petty personal 
feuds as well as in great party matters. Sir Walter 
Scott has done his best to render Montrose a hero of 
romance ; and a very good one he is, as far as valor 
and military conduct can make him ; but he is much 
fitter to be the hero of a modern Scotch ultra than 
of an English gentleman at any time. Hume, him- 
self a Scotchman and a Tory (though his philosophy 
and cool temperament relieved him from many of 
the absurdities connected with both of those watch- 
words), was inclined enough to like Montrose and 
his party, and yet hear how he begins his own ac- 
count of the Marquis's history: — 

" Before the commencement of these civil disorders, 
the Earl of Montrose, a young nobleman of a distin- 
guished family, returning from his travels, had been 
introduced to the King, and had made an offer of his 
services ; but by the insinuations of the Marquis, 
afterwards Duke of Hamilton, who possessed much 
of Charles's confidence, he had not been received with 
that distinction to which he thought himself justly 
entitled. Disgusted with this treatment, he had for- 
warded all the violence of the Covenanters ; and agree- 
ably to the natural ardor of his genius, he had em- 
ployed himself, during the first Scottish insurrection, 



378 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

with great zeal, as well as success, in levying and con- 
ducting their armies. Being commissioned by the 
Tables to wait upon the King, while the royal army 
lay at Berwick, he was so gained by the civilities and 
caresses of that monarch, that he thenceforth devoted 
himself entirely, though secretly, to his service, and 
entered into a close correspondence with him. In 
the second insurrection, a great military commauvl 
was intrusted to him by the Covenanters ; and he 
was the first that passed the Tweed, at the head of 
their troops, in the invasion of England. He found 
means, however, soon after to convey a letter to the 
King : and by the infidelity of some about that Prince 
— Hamilton, as was suspected — a copy of this letter 
was sent to Leven, the Scottish general. Being ac- 
cused of treachery and a correspondence with the 
enemy, Montrose openly avowed the letter, and asked 
the generals, if they dared to call their sovereign an 
enemy : and by this bold and magnanimous be- 
havior, he escaped the danger of an immediate 
prosecution. As he was now fully known to be of 
the royal part}^, he no longer concealed his princi- 
ples ; and he endeavored to draw those who had 
entertained like sentiments into a bond of association 
for his master's service. Though thrown into prison 
for this enterprise, and detained some time, he was 
not discouraged ; but still continued, by his coun- 
tenance and protection, to infuse spirit into the dis- 
tressed royalists." 

Let justice be done to Montrose, and to everybody : 
but that it may be done to everybody, let us take care 
how we allow the most interested misrepresentations 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 379 

of history to pass without notice, especially in these 
times. The servile have a sufficient re-action in their 
favor, from the events of the world, without being 
under the necessity of receiving further encourage- 
ment. 

Parliament Hours. — The old Parliament hours 
were from eight o'clock in the morning till twelve at 
noon. Afterwards, during the disputes of the House 
with Charles, Clarendon mentions a debate that lasted 
till after nine o'clock at night, which, he says, was the 
latest ever known, except that upon the Remonstrance. 
In his Life, an account is given of a bill, in which the 
Duke of Buckingham took so much interest, that, 
" contrary to his custom of coming into the House, 
indeed of not rising till eleven of the clock, and sel- 
dom staying above a quarter of an hour, except upon 
some aftairs which he concerned himself in, he was 
now always present with the first in the morning, 
and staid till the last at night, for the debate often 
held from the morning till four o'clock in the after- 
noon, and sometimes till candles were brought in." 
It was thought late to meet at ten. ''It is hard to 
tell," says Hume, in a note on the reign of Elizabeth, 
" v/hy, all over the world, as the age becomes more 
luxurious, the hours become later. Is it the crowd 
of amusements that push on the hours gradually? or 
are the people of fashion better pleased with the 
secrecy and silence of nocturnal hours, when the in- 
dustrious vulgar are all gone to rest.^ In rude ages, 
men have few amusements or occupations but what 
daylight affords them." These are undoubtedly 



380 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

among the causes; but the progress of commerce 
should be added. In proportion as traders and mer- 
chants become of importance, their hours must be 
considered ; and they Hke to have as many of these 
as possible at a time. The rakes of Charles the 
Second's time, and the rich merchants of the ensuing 
reigns, became alike the encouragers of late hours ; 
and fashion compelled what such opposite causes had 
begun. Parliaments now are in the habit of sitting 
up all night, and much worse they are for it. Their 
heads are muddled with wine ; another line of sepa- 
ration is drawn between them and the people ; and 
the spirit of dissipation, of fiishion, and of money- 
getting, alike conspire to render them sorry guardians 
of public liberty. The true spirit of a House of 
Commons is now to be found in a few members in- 
side, and those who canvass their actions out of doors. 
The great diffusion of knowledge and inquiry has 
rendereti the represented superior tc^fieir represen- 
tatives. Consider even the bodily vigor, the physical 
manliness of the old Parliament men who procured 
us our liberties, and then see what a poor set of shat- 
tered men of the world we have now for their suc- 
cessors, body as well as mind. And these two things 
are very apt to go together in men of public action, 
whether for good or evil. A solitary student who 
does his best, may have something to say in behalf of 
his infirmities; but how are a parcel of drinking, 
gambling, nervous, and gouty men to wage war 
with corruption at two o'clock in the morning.* 

* Addison has an amusing little paper on late hours, in the Tatler. " It is 
very plain," he says, "that the night was much longer formerly in this island 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 38 1 

Notions of Regal Property. — The King asks 
(Book V.) " what title any subject of his kingdom had 
to his house and land, that he had not to his town of 
Hull." Compare this with the story of the house 
and grounds which he forced a man to part with, and 
then read the following passage from our author's 
own pen : — 

*' A man shall not unprofitably spend his contem- 
plation, that, upon this occasion, considers the method 
of God's justice (a method terribly remarkable in 
many passages and upon many persons, which we 
shall be compelled to remember in this discourse), 
that the same principles, and the same application of 
those principles, should be used to wresting all sov- 
ereign power from the crown, which the crown had a 
little before made use of for extending its authority 
and power beyond its bounds, to the prejudice of the 
just rights of the subject. A supposed necessity was 
then thought ground enough to create a power, and a 
bare averment of that necessit}-, to beget a practice. 



than it Is at present. By the night, I mean that portion of time which nature 
has thrown into darkness, and which the wisdom of mankind had formerly dedi- 
cated to rest and silence. This used to begin at eight o'clock in the evening, 
and conclude at six in the morning. The curfew, or eight o'clock bell, was the 
signal throughout the nation for putting out their candles, and going to bed. 

"Our grandmothers, though they were wont to sit up the last in the family, 
were all of them fast asleep at the same hours that their daughters are now 
busy at crimp and basset. Modern statesmen are concerting schemes, and en- 
gaged in the depth of politics, at the time when their forefathers were laid down 
quietly to rest, and had nothing in their heads but dreams. As we have thus 
thrown business and pleasure into the hours of rest, and by that means made 
the natural night about half as long as it should be, we are forced to piece it out 
with a great part of the morning ; so that near two thirds of the nation lie fast 
asleep for several hours in broad daylight. This irregularity is grown so very 
fashionable at present, that there is scarce a lady of qiaahty in Great Britain 
that ever saw the sun rise." — Ed. 



382 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

to impose what they thought convenient upon the 
subject, by writs of ship-money never before known : 
and a supposed necessity now, and a bare averment 
of that necessity, is as confidently and more fatally 
concluded a good ground to exclude the crown from 
the use of any power, by an ordinance never before 
heard of, and the same maxim of salus populi su- 
prema lex^ which had been used to the infringing the 
liberty of the one, made use of for destroying the 
rights of the other." 

That it was ridiculous in one encroaching indi- 
vidual, or his court, to use the maxim of salus popiili 
for his own advantage, in contradistinction to theirs, 
is evident ; but it is not so evident that it was absurd 
or vicious in the people themselves to use the same 
maxim against the encroachments of the individual ; 
and by Clarendon's acknowledgment in many places, 
however he may contradict it in others, the people at 
large were really as much at issue with the King as 
their representatives. Clarendon, with all his su- 
periority to the rest of the court, argues this question, 
after all, like a lawyer. The King is his client, the 
people the defendants, and the most liberal concession 
he makes is, that both have equal rights. But by 
his own account, the people were in the right in 
this great quarrel. Their representatives, no doubt, 
sometimes committed great faults ; and what was 
worse, mean ones. They had not escaped the con- 
tagion of court example, and the cried-up craft of 
King James. But the great question had now come 
up ; of the many against the few. It was the few 
who began it ; they would have trampled the many 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 3S3 

into the dust forever ; and the many had a right to 
bring them to their proper senses and situations. 
The King up to this period has always averred, and 
still avers, that he never intended to make war on 
the Parliament. He solemnly protested it. And yet 
Clarendon now says, as an excuse to those v/ho re- 
proached the King with not making war, that the fact 
was, he had no means of making it, not a barrel of 
powder, nor musket, nor money ; but that he ex- 
pected all these necessaries with impatience from the 
Queen. (See Book V., in various places towards the 
end.) The Parliament had notice of all these secret 
wishes and manoeuvres : and yet both Clarendon and 
his master are constantly reproaching them for not 
putting faith in their practices ! 

Goring's infinite Hypocrisy, which Claren- 
don SEEMS TO admire. — " Coloucl Goring came, 
upon the summons, with that undauntedness, that all 
clouds of distrust immediately vanished, insomuch as 
no man presumed to whisper the least jealousy of 
him ; which he observing, came to the House of 
Commons, of which he was a member ; and, having 
sat a day or two patiently, as if he expected some 
charge, in the end he stood up, with a countenance 
full of modesty, and yet not without a mixture of an- 
ger (as he could help himself with all insinuations of 
doubt, or fear, or shame, or simplicity in his lace, 
.that might gain belief, to a greater degree than I ever 
saw any man ; and could seem the most confounded 
when he was best prepared, and the most out of 
countenance when he was best resolved, and to want 



384 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

words and the habit of speaking, when they flowed 
from no man with greater power), and told them, 
* that he had been sent for by them, upon some in- 
formation given against him, and that, though he be- 
lieved the charge being so ridiculous, they might have 
received, by their own particular inquiry, satisfaction ; 
yet the discourses that had been used, and his being 
sent for in that manner, had begot some prejudices to 
him in his reputation ; which if he could not pre- 
serve, he should be less able to do them service ; and 
therefore desired that he might have leave (though 
very unskilful, and unfit to speak in so wise and judi- 
cious assembl}') to present to them the state and con- 
dition of that place under his command, and then he 
doubted not but to give them full satisfaction in those 
particulars, which possibl}' had made some impres- 
sion on them to his disadvantage ; that he was far 
from taking it ill from those who had given any in- 
formation against him ; for what he had done, and 
must do, might give some umbrage to well-affected 
persons, w^ho knew not the grounds and reasons that 
induced him so to do ; but that if any such persons 
would, at any time, resort to him, he would clearly 
inform them of whatever motives he had ; and would 
be glad of their advice and assistance for the better 
doing thereof.' Then he took notice of every partic- 
ular that had been publicly said against him, or pri- 
vately whispered, and gave such plausible answers 
to the whole, intermingling sharp taunts and scorns 
to what had been said of him, with pretty application 
of himself and flattery to the men that spake it, 
concluding, ' that they well knew in what esteem he 



ESSAYS AND SKETC:iES. 385 

stood with others ; so that if, by his ill carriage, he 
should forfeit the good opinion of that House, upon 
which he only depended, and to whose service he 
entirely devoted himself, he were madder than his 
friends took him to be, and must be as unpitied in any 
misery that could befall him, as his enemy would be 
glad to see/ With which, as innocently and unaffect- 
edly uttered as can be imagined, he got so general 
an applause with the whole House, that not without 
some little apology for troubling him, they desired him 
again to repair to his government, and to finish those 
works which were necessary for the safety of the 
place ; and gratified him with consenting to all the 
propositions he made in behalf of his garrison, and 
paid him a good sum of money for their arrears ; with 
which, and being privately assured (which was in- 
deed resolved on) that he should be Lieutenant Gen- 
eral when it should be formed, he departed again to 
Portsmouth ; in the mean time assuring his Majesty, 
by those who were trusted between them, ' that he 
would be speedily in a posture to make his decla- 
ration for his service, as he should be required ; ' 
which* he was forced to do sooner than he was pro- 
vided for, though not soonfer than he had reason to 
expect." — Book V. 

Goring afterwards surrendered Portsmouth back 
again to the Parliament, but was still trusted by any- 
body whom he chose to deceive, and went lying and 
cheating on all sides of him. It is impossible, in 
spite of one's indignation, not to admire the talents 
which he so perverted ; but it is desirable in a writer 
who affects integrity like Clarendon, that the indig- 
2=; 



3S6 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

nation should be more prominent than he has chosen 
to make it^ Besides, a great deal of our admiration 
of such men is diminished, if we reflect, that they 
very likely succeeded in deceiving so many others, 
not because they are more clever than many of them, 
but because they possess one accomplishment the 
less, — namely, a sense of moral beauty. I suspect 
(which is extrely probable) that Goring very spe- 
cially deceived Clarendon himself; who then became 
willing to think as higiily as possible of a man that 
had overreached him ; for it is difficult not to see 
that his tendency, after all, is to value intellect and 
political dexterity above every other consideration. 
He confounded too often the instrument with its 
work. In Book VIII. is a capital summary of the 
character of Goring. Clarendon excels in portraits. 
He has here painted two sovereign debauchees to the 
life. 

Portraits of two Debauchees — Goring and 
WiLMOT. — " Goring, who was now General of the 
Horse, was no more gracious to Prince Rupert than 
Wilmot had been ; had all the other's faults and 
wanted his regularity, and preserving his respect with 
the officers. Wilmot loved debauchery, but shut it 
out from his business ; never neglected that, and 
rarely miscarried in it. Goring had a much better 
understanding, and a sharper wit (except in the very 
exercise of debauchery, and then the other was in- 
spired), a much keener courage and presentness of 
mind in danger. Wilmot discerned it farther off, and 
because he could not behave himself so well in it, 



ESSAY? AND SKETCHES. 387 

commonly prevented, or warily declined it ; and 
never drank when he was within distance of an 
enemy ; Goring was not able to resist the temptation 
when he was in the middle of them, nor would de- 
cline it to obtain a victory: as in one of those fits, 
he had suffered the horse to escape out of Cornwall ; 
and the most signal misfortunes in his life in war 
had their rise from that uncontrollable license. Nei- 
ther of them valued their promises, professions, or 
friendships, according to any rules of honor or integ- 
rity ; but Wilmot violated them the less willingly, and 
never but for some great benefit or convenience to 
himself; Goring without scruple, out of humor, or 
for wit's sake ; and loved no man so well but that 
he would cozen him, and then expose him to public 
mirth for having been cozened ; therefore he had al- 
ways fewer friends than the other, but more com- 
pany ; for no man had wit that pleased the company- 
better. The ambition of both was unlimited, and so 
equally incapable of being contented ; and both un- 
restrained, by any respect to good nature or justice, 
from pursuing the satisfaction thereof: yet Wilmot had 
more scruples from religion to startle him, and would 
not have attained his end by any gross or foul act 
of wickedness. Goring could have passed through 
pleasantly, and would without hesitation have broken 
any trust, or done any act of treachery to have sat- 
isfied an ordinary passion or appetite ; and, in truth, 
wanted nothing but industry (for he had wit, and 
courage, and understanding, and ambition, uncon- 
trolled by any fear of God or man) to have been as 
eminent and successful in the highest attempts of 



388 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

wickedness, as any man of the age he lived in or be- 
fore. Of all his qualifications, dissimulation was his 
masterpiece, in which he so much excelled, that men 
were not ordinarily ashamed or out of countenance 
with being deceived but twice by him." 

There is a Bacchanalian " Health to Goring" inthe 
Poems of Robert Herrick. If any charitable person 
wishes to find an excuse for Lord Rochester, let him 
know, if he does not know it already, that Wilmot 
was his father. 1825. 



GEORGE SELWYN AND HIS CONTEMPO- 
RARIES.* 

THERE is a charm in the bare title of this book. 
It is an open sesaine to a world of pleasant 

* Edinburgh Review, 1S44. — George Selwyn and his Contemporaries; with 
Memoir and Notes. By John Heneage Jesse. 4 vols. 8 vo. London : 1843-4. 

[The easy and idiomatic English of this paper, was not, it is to be feared, ap- 
preciated by Mr. Macvey Napier, Jeffrey's successor in the editorship of the 
Edinburgh Review ; for upon Hunt proposing to send him a "chatty article," 
for the " buff and blue," he grew alarmed, and wrote the essayist a harsh letter on 
dignity of style. The sensitive contributor was sorely wounded, and appealed to 
Macaulay for counsel, who replied in a kind and cordial letter. See with what 
tact Macaulay consoles the discomforted reviewer : " Napier would thoroughly 
appreciate the merit of a writer like Bolingbroke or Robertson ; but would, I 
think, be unpleasantly affected by the peculiarities of such a writer as Burton, 
Sterne, or Charles Lamb. He thinks your style too colloquial ; and, no doubt, it 
has a very colloquial character. I wish it to retain that character, which to me 
is exceedingly pleasant. But I think that the danger against which you have to 
guard is excess in that direction. Napier is the very man to be startled by the 
smallest excess in that direction. Therefore I am not surprised that, when you 
proposed to send him a chatty article, he took fright, and recommended dignity 
and severity of style." — Ed] 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 389 

things. As at the ringing of the manager's bell, the 
curtain rises, and discovers a hx\\\vdi\\\. table ait of wits, 
beauties, statesmen, and men of pleasure about town, 
attired in the quaint costume of our great-grandfa- 
thers and great-grandmothers ; or, better still, we feel 
as if we had obtained the reverse of Bentham's wish 
— to live a part of his life at the end of the next 
hundred years — by being permitted to live a part 
of ours about the beginning of the last^ with an ad- 
vantage he never stipulated for, of spending it with 
the pleasantest people of the day. 

Let us now suppose that only twenty-four hours 
were granted for us; how much might be done or 
seen within the time ! We take the privilege of 
long intimacy to drop in upon Selwyn in Chester- 
field Street, about half-past ten or eleven in the morn- 
ing ; we find him in his dressing-gown, playing with 
his dog Raton : at twelve we walk down arm-in- 
arm to White's, where Selwyn's arrival is hailed 
with a joyous laugh, and Topham Beauclerk hastens 
to initiate us into the newest bit of scandal. The 
day is warm, and a stroll to Betty's fruit-shop (St. 
James's Street) is proposed. Lord March is already 
there, settling his famous bet with young Mr. Pigot, 
that old Mr. Pigot would die before Sir William 
Codrington. Just as this grave affair is settled, a 
cry is raised <5f " the Gunnings are coming," and 
out we all tumble to gaze and criticise. At Brookes', 
our next house to call. Sir Charles Hanbury Wil- 
liams is easily persuaded to entertain the party by 
reading his verses, not yet printed, on the marriage 
of Mr. Hussey (an Irish gentleman) with the Duch- 



390 



THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 



ess of Manchester (tlie best match in the kingdom), 
and is made happy by our compliments; but looks 
rather blank on Rigby's hinting that the author .will 
be obliged to fight half the Irishmen in town, which, 
considering the turn of the verses, seemed probable 
enough. To change at once the subject and the 
scene, we accompany him and Rigby to the House 
of Commons, where we find the " great commoner" 
making a furious attack on the Attorney-General 
(Murray), who, as Walpole phrases it, suffered for 
an hour. After hearing an animated reply from 
Fox (the first Lord Holland), we rouse Selwyn, 
who is dozing behind the treasury bench, and, wish- 
ing to look in upon the Lords, make him introduce 
us. We find Lord Chesterfield speaking, the Chan- 
cellor (Hardwicke) expected to speak next, the Duke 
of Cumberland just come in, and the Duke of New- 
castle shuffling about in a ludicrous state of pertur- 
bation, betokening a crisis ; but Selwyn grows im- 
patient, and we hurry off' to Strawberry Hill, to join 
the rest of the celebrated fai-tie quarree^ or " out 
of town" party who are long ago assembled. The 
petit soziper appears on the instant, and as the cham- 
pagne circulates, there circulates along with it a 
refined, fastidious, fashionable, anecdotic, gossiping 
kind of pleasantry, as exhilarating as its sparkle, and 
as volatile as its froth. We return too late to see 
Garrick ; but time enough for the house-warming fete 
at Chesterfield House, where the Duke of Hamilton 
loses a thousand pounds at faro, because he chooses 
to ogle Elizabeth Gunning instead of attending to 
his cards. 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 39! 

We shall, perhaps, be reminded that we have seen 
nothing of Fielding, Richardson, Smollett, Johnson, 
Collins, Akenside, Mason, or Gray ; but our gay 
friends, alas ! never once alluded to them, and for 
us to waste any part of so short a period in look- 
ing for men of letters, would be to act like the 
debtor in the Qj-ieen's Bench prison, who, when he 
got a day rule, invariably spent it in the Fleet. 

According to Mr. Jesse, we owe this new glimpse 
into these times to a habit of Selwyn's, which it is 
difficult to reconcile with his general carelessness. 
" It seems to have been one of his peculiarities to 
preserve not only every letter addressed to him dur- 
ing the course of his long life, but also the most 
trifling notes and unimportant memoranda." Such 
was -the practice of the most celebrated wit of the 
eighteenth century ; the most celebrated wit of the 
nineteenth does precisely the reverse. " Upon princi- 
ple," said the Rev. Sydney ,Smith, in answer to an 
application about letters from Sir John Mackintosh, 
" I keep no letters, except those on business. I have 
not a single letter from him, nor from any human 
being in my possession." * We should certainly pre- 
fer being our contemporary's correspondent ; but we 
must confess that we are not sorry to come in for a 
share of the benefits accruing from Selwyn's savings 
to his posterity. 



* Life of Mackintosh, by his Son, vol. ii , page 99. — "We talked of letter- 
writing. ' It is now,' s&id Johnson, ' become so much the fashion to publish let- 
ters, that, in order to avoid it, I put as little into mine as I can.' 'Do what you 
will, sir,' replied Boswell, 'you cannot avoid it.' " — Boswell's Life of Johnson, 
vol. vii., p. So. 



392 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

"To this peculiarity," continues Mr. Jesse, " the reader is 
indebted for whatever amusement he may derive from the 
perusal of these volumes. The greater portion of their con- 
tents consists of letters addressed to Selwj'n by persons w^ho, 
in their day, moved in the first ranks of w^it, genius, and 
fashion. Independent of their general merit as epistolary 
compositions, the editor conceives that they will be found in 
a high degree valuable and entertaining, from the light 
which they throw on the manners and customs of society in 
the last age, from their presenting a faithful chronicle of the 
passing events of the day, and from the mass of amusing 
gossip and lively anecdote which they contain." 

This is a rather injudicious paragraph. It excites 
expectations which are not fulfiled. There is very 
little anecdote — less altogether than will be found in 
any half dozen consecutive letters of Walpole ; and 
two volumes would contain everything in the book 
calculated to throw the faintest light on manners. It 
is, indeed, precisely of that kind which Bacon says 
should be read by deputy, i. e., through the medium 
of a Review ; for the real meaning of the aphorism — 
" Bad books make good reviews, as bad wine makes 
good vinegar" — is not, as the profane allege, be- 
cause critics excel or exult in fault-finding, but be- 
cause their chief utility consists in collecting scattered 
beauties, distilling essences, or separating the true 
metal from the dross. But it would be unjust to call 
this a bad book ; it is certainly one which every pos- 
sessor of a library should possess ; yet it is one in 
which the quantity of print is out of all proportion to 
the useful or amusing matter ; and the intelligent 
editor is evidently conscious of the fact; for, on what 
principle can his singularly liberal mode of annotation 
be defended, except as compensating for the poverty 
of the text.^ The le<ritlmate use of editorial notes is 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 393 

to clear up doubtful allusions, or supply knowledge 
necessary to the understanding of the work. For ex- 
ample, it might be useful to tell us something about 
Gilly Williams ; but the youngest reader knows 
enough of Garrick not to be puzzled by the incidental 
occurrence of his name. Yet we are favored with a 
biographical notice of the great actor, occupying ten 
pages, apropos of this solitary line in one of Dr. War- 
ner's letters — " The chapter of Garrick (his death) 
is a very melancholy one for poor Harry Hoare and 
me." This is book-making with a vengeance ! At 
the same time, tliis mode of proceeding has answered 
the main purpose ; it has made the book more reada- 
ble, and may save the indolently curious much trou- 
ble, by placing all they can possibly wish to learn, or 
refer to, within reach. Thus we find here a careful 
compilation of most of the scattered notices regarding 
Selwyn himself; and, with the help of the materials 
thus collected, we will endeavor, before tapping (to 
borrow Walpole's word) the chapter of his correspon- 
dence, to sketch an outline of his life. 

George Augustus Selwyn entered the world with 
every advantage of birth and connection ; to which 
that of fortune was added in good time. His father, 
Colonel John Selwyn, of Matson, in Gloucestershire, 
where the family ranked as one of the best in the 
county, had been aide-de-camp to the Duke of Marl- 
borough, commanded a regiment, sat many years in 
Parliament, and filled various situations about the 
court. His mother, a daughter of General Farring- 
ton, was woman of the bedchamber to Qtieen Caroline, 
and enjoyed a high reputation for social humor. As 



394 THK VVISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

his father was a plain, straightforward, commonphice 
sort of man, it is fiiir to presume that he inherited his 
pecuHar talent from her ; thus adding another to the 
many instances of gifted men formed by mothers, or 
endowed by them with the best and brightest of their 
qualities. Schiller, Goethe, the Schlegels, Victor 
Hugo, Canning, Lord Brougham, occur to us on the 
instant ; and Curran said, " The only inheritance I 
could boast of from my poor father, was the very 
scanty one of an unattractive face and person, like his 
own ; and if the world has ever attributed to me some- 
thing more valuable than face or person, or than 
earthly wealth, it was that another and a dearer par- 
ent gave her child a fortune from the treasure of her 
mind." 

Selwyn was born on the irth August, 1719- He 
was educated at Eton, and on leaving it entered at 
Hertford College, Oxford. After a short stay at the 
University, he started on the grand tour, and on his 
return, though a second son, with an elder brother 
living, made London and Paris his headquarters, be- 
came a member of the clubs, and associated with the 
wits and men of fashion. Before he had completed 
his twenty-first year, he was appointed clerk of the 
irons and surveyor of the meltings at the mint : offices 
usually performed by deputy. At all events, occa- 
sional attendance at the weekly dinner formerly pro- 
vided for this department (5f the public service, was 
the only duty they imposed on Selwyn ; the very man 
to act on Colonel Hanger's principle, who, when a 
friend in power suggested that a particular office, not 
being a sinecure, would hardly suit him, replied, " Get 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. • 395 

me the place, and leave me alone for making it a 
sinecure." The salary must have been small, for in a 
letter from Paris (September, 1742), he says that his 
entire income, including the allowance made him by 
his father, was only two hundred and twenty pounds 
a year ; and he appears to have been constantly in 
distress for money. In a letter to his former Eton 
tutor, Mr. Vincent Mathias (Paris, November, 1742), 
he entreats his advice as to the best mode of getting 
the colonel to advance a small sum over and above 
his yearly income ; and gives a pitiable description of 
circumstances, — "without clothes, linen, books, or 
credit." 

In 1744 Selvvyn returned to Hertford College, and 
resumed the life of a college student, — unaccountably, 
enough, for he was then a formed man of the world, 
and twenty-five. Probably he had the thoughts of 
pursuing a profession, or, to please his father, pre- 
tended that he had. His influential position in the 
London world at this time, is shown by letters from 
Rigby and Sir Charles Hanbury Williams. 

" The Right Hon. Richard Rigby to George SeHvyn. 
*■ Tuesday, March 12 (1745), 7 o'clock. 
" Dear George : I thank jou for your letter, which I 
have this moment received and read; and, that you may not 
be surprised at my readiness in answering it, 1 will begin 
vi^ith telling 3'ou the occasion of it. I am just got home from 
a cock-match, where I have won fortj' pounds in ready money, 
and, not having dined, am waiting till I hear the rattle of 
p the coaches from the House of Commons, in order to dine at 
White's; and now I will begin my journal, for in that style 
I believe my letters will be best received, considerino- our 
situations. 

" I saw Garrick act Othello that same night, in which I 
think he was very unmeaningly dressed, and succeeded in 



39^ THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

no degree of comparison with Quin, except in the scene 
where lago gives him the first suspicion of Desdemona. 
He endeavored throughout to play and speak everything 
directly different from Qiiin, and failed, I think, in most of 
his alterations." 

This was the occasion when Qiiiii went to the pit 
to see his rival act. It was at a time when Hogarth's 
Marriage a la Mode was famihar to every one. One 
of the prints of that series represents a negro boy 
brincrinsf in the tea thing^s. When Garrick, with his 
diminutive figure and blackened face, came forward 
as Othello, Qiiin exclaimed, " Here is Pompey, but 
where is the tray?" The effect was electrical, and 
Garrick never attempted Othello again. When Dr. 
Griffiths, many years afterwards, thoughtlessly in- 
quired whether he had ever acted the part, " Sir," 
said he, evidently disconcerted, " I once acted it to 
my cost." 

Sir Charles writes, — 

" I hope you divert yourself well at the expense of the 
whole University, though the object is not worthy you. The 
dullest fellow in it has parts enough to ridicule it, and you 
have parts to fly at nobler game." 

By disregarding this sensible hint Selwyn got into 
a scrape, which, had it happened in our time, would 
have fixed a lasting stigma on his character. In 1745 
he so far forgot himself, in a drunken frolic, as to go 
through a profane mockery of a religious ceremony ; 
and the circumstance having come to the knowledge 
of the heads of the University, he was expelled. Most 
of his gay friends looked on this affair in the same 
light as Sir William Maynard, who writes thus : — 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 397 

" Walthamstow, July 3, 1745. 
"Dear George : I have this moment received jours, 
and have only time to tell you the sooner you come here, 
the greater the obligation will be to me. D — n the Univer- 
sity ! — I 'jjisk they xvere both o)i fire, and one could hear the 
^proctors cry like roasted lobsters. Mv compliments to Dr. 
Newton. Yours afFectionatelv, 

"W. M." 

Indeed, the only palliation or apology, and that a 
poor one, that can be urged for Sehvyn, is to be found 
in the bad taste and loose habits of his contempora- 
ries. The famous Medenhani Abbey club was founded 
soon afterwards. It consisted of twelve members, 
who met at Medenham Abbey, near Marlow, to in- 
dulge in ribaldry, profanity, and licentiousness. The 
motto (from Rabelais) over the grand entrance was, 
Fay ce que voudrais. Though the club became no- 
torious, and their disgusting profanity was well known, 
it proved no bar either to the reception of the members 
in society, or to their advancement in the state. Sir 
Francis Dashwood, the founder, who officated as high 
priest, became Chancellor of the Exchequer ; Lord 
Sandwich, First Lord of the Admiralty ; and Wilkes 
everything that the sober citizens of London could 
make him. 

Selwyn's character at this time is given by one of 
the Oxford magnates : " The upper part of society 
here, with whom he often converses, hav^e, and always 
have had, a very good opinion of him. He is cer- 
tainly not intemperate nor dissolute, nor does he 
game that I know or have heard of He has a 
good deal of vanity, and loves to be admired and 
caressed, and so suits himself with great ease to the 
gravest and the sprightliest." 



398 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

Colonel and Mrs. Selwyn were, on this occasion, 
shocked and irritated in the highest degree ; but the 
failing health of his elder brother John contributed to 
soften them, and procure him an extent of indulgence 
which would hardly have been granted, had it not be- 
come apparent that the family estate and honors must 
eventually devolve upon him. John Selwyn was the 
intimate friend of Marshal Conway, to whom, so 
early as 1740, Walpole writes, " I did not hurry my- 
self to answer your last, but chose to write to poor 
Selwyn upon his illness. He deserves so much love 
from all that know him, and you owe him so much 
friendship, that I can scarce conceive a greater shock." 
He did not die till June, 1751, when George Selwyn 
was in his thirty-second year. By this event he be- 
came the heir, but the estate was unentailed, and his 
prospects were still dubious enough to excite the ap- 
prehensions of his friends. In November, 175^5 ^^^' 
William Maynard writes, — 

" The public papers informed me of your father's being 
dangerously ill, which was confirmed to me last post. As 
you have always convinced me of your love for your father 
(though I can't persuade the world you will be sorry for his 
death), I shall be glad to know, if you have one moment's 
leisure, how he does, as you are so nearly concerned in his 
doing well. I can't help thinking but it will be more for 
your interest that your father should recover, as I don't yet 
imagine you quite established in his good opinion, and as 
you havB so powerful an enemy at home." 

Who his powerful enemy at home was, does not 
appear. His mother is mentioned in a preceding let- 
ter as his advocate ; yet one of Walpole's anecdotes 
implies that at one time he had forfeited the affection 
of both parents. The notorious Lady Townshend 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 399 

had taken an extraordinary fancy to the rebel, Lord 
Kihnarnock, whom she had never seen until the 
day of his trial. " George Selvvyn dined with her, 
and not thinking her affliction so serious as she pre- 
tended, talked ra4:her jokingly of the execution. She 
burst into a flood of tears and rage, told hun she now 
believed all his father and mother had said of him ^ 
and, with a thousand other reproaches, flung up stairs. 
George coolly took Mrs. Dorcas, her woman, and 
made her sit down to finish the bottle. ' And pray, 
sir,' says Dorcas, ' do you think my lady will be pre- 
vailed upon to let me go and see the execution ? I 
have a friend that has promised to take care of me, 
and I can lie in the tower the night before.' " 

His father died in 1751, without tying up the prop- 
erty, which brought with it the power of nominating 
two members for Ludgershall, and interest enough at 
Gloucester to insure his own return for that city. The 
change of circumstances made little change in his 
course of life. He had sat in Parliament for the fam- 
ily borough since 1747, when Gilly Williams writes, 
" I congratulate you on the near approach of Parlia- 
ment, and figure you to myself before a glass at your 
rehearsals. I must intimate to you not to forget closing 
your periods with a significant stroke of the breast, 
and recommend Mr. Barry as a pattern, who I think 
pathetically excels in that beauty." Spranger Barry, 
the actor, is the intended model ; but Selvvyn was not 
ambitious of senatorial honors, and when obliged to 
attend the House, and be in readiness for a division, 
he used either to withdraw to one of the committee- 
rooms for conversation, or to fall asleep. He gener- 



400 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

ally sided with the court party, and was well reward- 
ed for his constancy ; being at the same time clerk of 
the irons, and surveyor of the meltings at the mint, 
registrar of the court of chancery in Barbadoes (where 
he had an estate), and paymaster of the works — de- 
scribed as a very lucrative appointment. It was abol- 
ished in 17S2 by Burke's economical reform bill ; but 
in the course of the next year he was made surveyor- 
general of the works by Mr. Pitt. 

In 1768 he was opposed at Gloucester by a timber- 
merchant, and the manner in which his friends speak 
of his opponent is characteristic of the times. Gilly 
Williams calls him "ad — d carpenter ; " and Lord 
Carlisle asks, — 

"Why did you not set his timber-yard afire? What can 
a man mean who has not an idea separated from the foot 
square of a Norway deal plank, by desiring- to be in Parlia- 
ment ? Perhaps if you could have got anybody to have asked 
him his reasons for such an unnatural attempt, the fact of 
his being unable to answer what he had never thought about, 
might have made him desist. But these beasts are mon- 
strously obstinate, and about as wellbred as the great dogs 
they keep in their yards." 

It is currently related that Selwyn did his best to 
keep Sheridan out of Brookes', and was only prevent- 
ed from black-balling him for the third or fourth time 
by a trick. According to one version, the Prince of 
Wales kept Selwyn in conversation at the door till 
the ballot was over. According to Wraxall's, he was 
suddenly called away by a pretended message from 
his adopted daughter. Some attribute his dislike to 
aristocratic prejudice; others to party feeling; and 
Mr. Jesse sa^s it arose in a great degree from Sheri- 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 4OI 

dan's " having been one of the party which had de- 
prived Selwyn of a kicrative post " — that of Paymas- 
ter of the Works. Yet Mr. Jesse himself states that 
the black-balHng occurred in 1780, and that the place 
was abolished in 17S2. We are uncharitable enough 
to think that an established wit would feel something 
like an established beauty at the proposed introduc- 
tion of a rival, and that a tinge of jealousy might have 
been the foundation of the dislike. 

Selwyn had taken to gaming before his father's 
death — probably from his first introduction to the 
clubs. In 1748, Gilly Williams asks, "What do 
you intend? I think the almanac bids you take care 
of colds, and abstain from physic; I say, avoid the 
knowing ones, and abstain from hazard." His stakes 
were high, though not extravagantly so compared 
with the sums hazarded by his contemporaries. In 
1765 he lost a thousand pounds to Air. Shafto, who 
applies for it in language of an embarrassed trades- 
man : — 

"July I, 1765. 

" Dear Sir : I have this moment received the favor of 
your letter. I intended to have gone out of town on Thurs- 
day, but as you shall not receive your money before the end 
of this week, I must postpone my journey till Sunday. A 
month would have made no difference to me had I not had 
others to pay before I leave town, and must pay; therefore 
must beg that you will leave the whole before the week is 
out, at White's, as it is to be paid away to others to whom 
I have lost, and do not choose to leave town till that is 
done. 

*' Be sure you could not wish an indulgence I should not 
be happy to grant, if in my power." 

Mr. Jesse states, that latterly Selwyn entirely got the 
better of his propensity to play ; observing, that it was 
26 



402 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

too great a consumer of four things — time, health, 
fortune, and thinking. But an extract from the late 
Mr. Wilberforce's Diary throws some doubt on the 
accuracy of this statement : " The first time I was 
at Brookes', scarcely knowing any one, I joined 
from mere shyness, at the faro-table, where George 
Selwyn kept bank. A friend who knew my inex- 
perience, and regarded me as a victim decked out 
for sacrifice, called out to me, " What, Wilberforce ! 
is that you.?" Selwyn quite resented this interfer- 
ence, and turning to him said, in his most impres- 
sive tone, " O, sir ! don't interrupt Mr. Wilberforce ; 
he could not be better employed." This occurred in 
1782, when Selwyn was sixty-three. 

Previously we find him, in 1776, undergoing the 
process of dunning from Lord Derby; and in 1779, 
from Mr. Crawford, '• Fish Crawford," as he was 
called, each of whom, like Mr. vShafto, " had a sum 
to make up." 

Gaming was his only vice. He indulged moder- 
ately in the pleasures of the table. In 1765 Williams 
writes, " You may eat boiled chicken and kiss Raton 
(his dog) as well on this side the water." As regards 
gallantry, we have good authority for doubting wheth- 
er he was quite so much an anchorite as was sup- 
posed ; but his coldness was a constant subject of ban- 
ter among his friends. Lord Holland says, " My Lady 
Mary goes (to a masquerade) dressed like Zara, and 
I wish you to attend her dressed like a black eunuch." 
Lord Carlisle — "In regard to her (a mysterious 
unknown), in every other light but as a friend, you 
shall see I shall be as cold as a stone, or as yourself." 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 403 

Readers of the RolHad may recall a broader joke ; 
and Mr. Jesse has ventured to print one of Gilly Wil- 
liams's levelled at Walpole as well as Selwyn, which 
we cannot venture to transcribe. As to his alleged 
intrigue with the Marchesa Fagniani, there is no bet- 
ter proof of it than his extreme fondness for her daugh- 
ter (Maria, Dowager-Marchioness of Hertford), 
whom the gossips thence inferred to be his own. In 
contemporary opinion, Lord INIarch shared the honors 
of paternity with Selvvyn. He was equally intimate 
with her mother, and he left her an immense fortune 
at his death. Resemblance, too, must go for some- 
thing ; and Dr. Warner, after an interviev^ with Lord 
March, says, " The more I contemplate his face, the 
more I am struck with a certain likeness to the lower 
part of it ; his very chin and lips, and they are rather 
singular. But you will never be d' accoi'd upon this 
interesting subject, as I am sorry to be too much con- 
vinced ; but that you know better than I." In con- 
sidering this question, it must not be forgotten that 
Selvvyn's passion for children was one of the marked 
features of his character. Lord Carlisle's and Lord 
Coventry's, particularly Lady Anne Coventry (after- 
wards Lady Anne Foley), were among his especial 
favorites. 

Selwyn paid frequent visits to Paris, and spoke 
French to perfection. " I shall let Lord Huntingdon 
know (says Lord March) that you are thought to have 
a better pronunciation than any one that ever cam.e 
from this country." The queen of Louis the Fifteenth 
took pleasure in conversing with him. '' I dined to- 
day (we are still quoting from Lord March) at what is 



404 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

called no dinner, at Madame de Coignie's. The Queen 
asked Madame de Mirepoix, ' Si elle n'avait pas beau- 
coup entendu medire de Monsieur Selvvyn etelle?* 
Elle a repondu, ' Oui, beaucoup, Madame.' ' J'en 
suis bien-aise,' dit la Reine." 

He was received on a perfect footing of equality, 
and, as it were, naturalized in that brilliant circle of 
which Madame du Deffand was the centre ; and he 
often lingered longer in it than w^as agreeable to his 
English friends. " Lady Hertford (writes Lord 
March in 1766) made a thousand inquiries about you ; 
asked how long you intended to stay, and hoped you 
would soon be tired of blind women, old presidents, 
and premiers," — alluding to Madame du Deffand, the 
president Henault, and the Due de Choiseul. Wil- 
liams sarcastically inquires, " Cannot we get you an 
hospital in this island, where you can pass your even- 
ings with some very sensible matrons? and, if they are 
not quite blind, they may have some natural infirmity 
equivalent to it." 

Nothing proves Selwyn's real superiority more 
strongly than his reception in this brilliant coterie, 
and the enjoyment he found in it ; for when he began 
making his periodical visits to Paris, national preju- 
dice was at its height; — the French regarded the 
English as barbarians, and the English entertained a 
contemptuous aversion for the French. So late as 
1769, Lord Carlisle thus amusingly alludes to the sen- 
timents of the former ; — 

'• I am very sorry to hear Mr. Wood's family were splashed 
by the sea. People who never travel know very little what 
dangers we run. I dare say most of your French acquaint- 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 405 

ances here wonder you do not go to England by land, but 
I believe they are very easy about us after we are gone. 
They think we are very little altered since the landing of 
Julius Coesar; that we leave our clothes at Calais, having 
no further occasion for them, and that every one of us 

has a sun-flower cut out and painted upon his , like 

the prints in Clarke's Caesar. I do not think that all en- 
tertain this idea of us; I only mean the scavans ; those who 
can read." 

The French might be pardoned for supposing that 
the English left their clothes at Calais, for the tailors 
of Paris were then as much in requisition as the milli- 
ners ; and Selvvyn is invariably loaded with com- 
missions for velvet coats, silk small-clothes, brocade 
dressing-gowns, lace ruffles, and various other arti- 
cles, by the gravest as well as the gayest of his 
friends. As for the notion of reaching England by 
land^ geography and the use of the globes were rare 
accomplishments in both countries. When Whiston 
foretold the destruction of the world within three 
years, the Duchess of Bolton avowed an intention 
of escaping the common ruin by going to China. 

Selwyn not only overcame the national prejudice 
in his own individual instance, but paved the way 
for the reception of his friends. It was he who 
made Horace Walpole acquainted with Madame du 
Deftand, and Gibbon with Madame de Geoffrin. 

His habit of dozing in the House of Commons 
has been already noticed. He occasionally dozed in 
society. " We hear," says Williams, " of your fall- 
ing asleep standing at the old President's (He- 
nault's), and knocking him and three more old wo- 
men into the fire. Are these things true } " Wal- 
pole also hints at it. " When you have a quarter 



4o6 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

of an hour, azvake and to spare, I wish you would 
bestow it on me." He is by no means singular, as 
might be shown by many remarkable instances be- 
sides that of Lord North, who, according to Gib- 
bon, "• might well indulge a short slumber on the 
treasury bench, when supported by the majestic 
sense of Thurlow on the one side, and the skilful 
eloquence of Wedderburne on the other." Lord 
Byron, in one of his journals, records a dinner party 
of twelve, including Sheridan, Tierney, and Erskine, 
of whom five were fast asleep before the dessert was 
well upon the table. In another, he relates, "At 
the opposition meeting of the peers in 1812, at Lord 
Grenville's, where Lord Grey and he read to us the 
correspondence upon Moira's negotiation, I sat next 
to the present Duke of Grafton, and said', 'What is 
to be done next?' ' Wake the Duke of No7'folk' 
(who was snoring away near us), replied he; 'I 
don't think the negotiators have left anything else 
for us to do this turn.' " Considering the hours kept 
by modern wits and senators, they may be excused 
for dropping into a pleasing state of forgetfulness 
occasionally ; but Selwyn had no such excuse. His 
mode of life is exhibited in a droll sketch, in a let- 
ter to himself, written by Lord Carlisle at Spa, in 
1768. "I rise at six; am on horseback till break- 
fast ; play at cricket till dinner ; and dance in the 
evening till I can scarce crawl to bed at eleven. 
There is a life for you ! You get up at nine ; play 
with Raton till twelve in your night-gown ; then 
creep down to White's to abuse Fanshawe ; are five 
hours at table ; sleep till you can escape your sup- 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 



407 



per reckoning ; then make two wretches carry you, 
with three pints of chiret in you, three miles for a 
shining." 

Wits are seldom given to ruralities. Jekyll used 
to say that, if compelled to live in the country, he 
would have the road before his door paved like a 
street, and hire a hackney coach to drive up and 
down all day long. Selwyn partook largely of this 
feeling. The state of a gentleman's cellar was then, 
whatever it may be now, a fair indication of the 
use he made of his house, and Matson was very 
slenderly stocked. When Gilly Williams took up his 
quarters there in passing through Gloucester, he 
writes, " I asked Bell to dine here, but he is too 
weak to venture so far; so the Methodist and I will 
taste your new and old claret. I have been down 
in the cellar: there are about nine bottles of old, 
and five dozen of new.*' Yet Matson was a highly 
agreeable residence, charmingly situated, and rich 
in historical associations. Charles the Second and 
James the Second (both boys at the time) were 
quartered there during the siege of Gloucester by the 
Royalists in 1643 ; and they amused themselves by 
cutting out their names, with various irregular em- 
blazonments, on the window-shutters. 

During one of his brief electioneering visits at 
Matson, Selwyn took it into his head to perform 
justiceship ; for (as Fielding observes with reference 
to the similar attempt on the part of Squire Wes- 
tern), it was, indeed, a syllable more than justice. 
"What the devil," exclaims Gilly Williams, "could 
tempt you to act as justice of the peace.? This is 



4oS THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

Trapolin with a vengeance ! What ! evidence, party, 
and judge too ! If you do not make it up with the 
man soon, some rogue of an attorney will plague 
your heart out in the King's Bench." His gardener 
had been guilty of some peculation, for which Sel- 
wyn, without ceremony, committed him. 

A little over-eagerness might be excused, as one 
of his strongest peculiarities was a passion for the 
details of criminal justice, from the warrant to the 
rope. His friends made a point of gratifying it by 
sending the earliest intelligence of remarkable crimes, 
criminals, trials, and executions, as well as every 
anecdote they could collect concerning them. When 
Walpole's house in Arlington Street was broken 
open, his first care, after securing the robber, was 
to send for Selwyn. " I despatched a courier to 
White's for George, who, you know, loves nothing 
upon earth so well as a criminal, except the exe- 
cution of him. It happened very luckily that the 
drawer who received my message has very lately 
been robbed himself, and had the wound fresh in his 
memory. He stalked up into the club-room, stopped 
short, and with a hollow, trembling voice said, ' Mr. 
Selwyn, Mr. Walpole's compliments, and he's got a 
housebreaker for you.'" Gilly Williams, having no 
housebreaker for him, sends him a story about one 
instead : " I will give you a Newgate anecdote, 
which I had from a gentleman who called on 
P. Lewis the night before the execution, and heard 
one runner call to another and order a chicken 
boiled for Rice's supper ; ' but,' says he, ' you need 
not be curious about the sauce, for he is to be 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 409 

hanged to-morrow.' ' That is true," says the other, 
' but the orcUnary sups with him, and you know he 
is a devil of a fellow for butter.' If the continental 
air has not altered you, this will please 3^ou ; at least 
I have known the time when you have gone a good 
way for such a morsel." 

The best stories regarding his taste for executions 
are related by Walpole, and well known. Innumer- 
able are the jokes levelled at him for this peculiarity. 
The best is the first Lord Holland's, who was dying. 
" The next time Mr. Selv/yn calls, show him up. If 
I am alive, I shall be delighted to see him ; and if I 
am dead, he will be glad to see me." Lord Hol- 
land was not the only statesman of the period who 
could joke under such circumstances. Mr. Legge 
(the story is Gilly Williams's) told a very fat fellow 
who came to see him the day he died, " Sir, you are 
a great weight ; but, let me tell you, you are in at tlie 
death." Another of the same gentleman's stories is 
probably meant as a warning — " I remember a man 
seeing a military execution in Hyde Park, and when 
it was over he turned about and said, ' By G — , I 
thought there was more in it ! ' He shot himself the 
next morning." 

The writer of a letter in the Gentleman's Maga- 
zine, for April, 1791, supposed to be the Rev. Dr. 
Warner, makes a gallant effort to rescue Selwyn's 
memory from what he terms an unjust and injurious 
imputation. After urging that nothing could be more 
abhorrent from Selw^yn's character, and that he had 
the most tender and benevolent of hearts, he thus pro- 
ceeds : " This idle but wide-spread idea of his be- 



4IO THE WISHING-OAP PAPERS. 

ing fond of executions (of which he never in his life 
attended but at one, and that rather accidentally from 
its lying in his way, than from design) arose from 
the pleasantries which it pleased Sir Charles Hanbury 
Williams, and the then Lord Chesterfield, to propa- 
gate from that one attendance, for the amusement of 
their common friends. Of the easiness with which such 
things sat upon him, you may judge from the follow- 
ing circumstance, which I have heard him more than 
once relate. Sir Charles was telling a large company 
a similar story to that of his attending upon executions, 
with many strokes of rich humor received with great 
glee, before his face, when a gentleman who sat next 
to the object of their mirth, said to him in a low voice, 
'It is strange, George, so intimate as we are, that 
I should never have heard of this story before.' 'Not 
at all strange,' he replied in the same voice, ' for Sir 
Charles has just invented it, and knows that I will not, 
by contradiction, spoil the pleasure of the company 
he is so highly entertaining.' And such was his good- 
nature in everything." This may account for the pleas- 
antries, but hardly for the fiicts stated by Walpole and 
others ; or for such an epistle as the following : 
" I can with great pleasure inform you, my dear 
Selwyn, that the head is ordered to be delivered on 
the first application made on your part. The ex- 
pense is a little more than a guinea ; the person 
who calls should pay for it. Adieu, mon cher mon- 
dain. T. Phillips." 

As to tenderness and benevolence, there surely was 
no necessity for assuming that the taste in question 
was irreconcilable with such qualities. It was simply 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 4I I 

a craving for strong excitement ; a inoclification of 
the feeling which still induces the Spanish women to 
attend bull-fights, and formerly lured the gentlest and 
noblest of the sex to tournaments. Moreover, people 
were by no means so refined or squeamish in Sel- 
wyn's time as now, when the spectacle of blood} 
heads over Temple Bar would not be tolerated for ar 
hour. Crowds of all classes pressed round to gaze or, 
those of the rebel lords in 1746 ; and telescopes were 
fixed for the use of the curious at a halfpenny a peep. 
" I remember " says Johnson, as reported by Bos- 
well, " once being with Goldsmith in Westminster 
Abbey. While we surveyed the Poets' Corner, I 
said to him, — 

'Forsitan et nomen nostrum miscebitur istis.' 

When we got to Temple Bar, he stopped me, point- 
ed to the heads upon it, and slyly whispered me, — 

' Forsitan et nomen nostrum miscebitur istts.^ " 

Nay, not much more than twenty years ago, it was 
customary for the governor of Newgate to give a 
breakfast to thirteen or fourteen persons of distinction 
on the morning of an execution. The party attended 
the hanging, breakfasted, and then attended the cut- 
ting down, but few had any appetite for the second 
and third parts of the ceremonial. A very pretty 
girl (the governor's daughter, we believe), who 
spoke of the sufferers as "• our people^"" distributed 
the tea and coffee. She assured us, in confidence, 
that the first call of the incipient amateur was invari- 
ably for brandy ; and that the only guest who never 



412 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

failed to do justice to the broiled kidneys (for which 
she was famous) was the ordinary. 

Storer (one of the Selwyn set) writes in 1774, 
" You will get by your edition of Madame de Se- 
\i gene's Letters enough to pay for as much Viiz dc 
Grave as ever she drank en Bi-etagne.^^ Selwyn 
rivalled, or outran Walpole in his admiration of Ma- 
dame de Sevigne, and paid a visit to her residence, 
Les Rockers (excellently described; as at present 
existing, in Lady Morgan's " Book of the Boudoir ; ") 
but we find no other proof of direct literary intentions 
on his part ; and there is consequently no ground for 
disputing the applicability of the remark with which 
Mr. Jesse introduces the topic of his wit : — 

" Perhaps no individual has ever acquired so general a 
reputation for mere wit as George Selwyn. Villiers, Duke 
of Buckingham, Lords Dorset, Rochester, Chesterfield, and 
Hervey, Sir Charles Hanburj' Williams, Bubb Doddington, 
Sheridan, and (perhaps the most brilliant luminary in this 
galaxy of wit) the late Theodore Hook, were men who 
had, one and all, distinguished themselves in following the 
paths of literature, while more than one of them had ren- 
dered himself eminent in the senate. Thus the character 
which each maintained for wit was supported by the adven- 
titious aid of a reputation for literary or oratorical talents, 
while the fame of George Selwyn stands exclusively on his 
character for social pleasantry and conversational wit." 

Not quite, we must observe. It stood also on his 
three seats in Parliament, and his family connections. 
These, at the very outset, procured him that vantage- 
ground to which Sheridan and Hook were obliged 
to win. their way at the risk of fretting a thousand 
vanities. This may not apply to the rest on Mr. 
Jesse's list ; but then it is a very imperfect one, and 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 413 

admits of large additions — as (omitting all living ex- 
amples) Foote, Wilkes, Jekyll, Curran, Colman. 

Dr. Johnson disliked Foote ; but when one of the 
company, at a dinner party at Dilly's, called him a 
merry-andrew, a buffoon, the sage at once declared 
that he had wit, and added, " The first time I was 
in company with Foote was at Fitzherbert's. Hav- 
ing no good opinion of the fellow, I was resolved 
not to be pleased ; and it is very difficult to please 
a man against his will. I went on taking my din- 
ner pretty sullenly, atiecting not to mind him. But 
the dog was so very comical, that I was obliged to 
lay down my knife and fork, throw myself back on 
my chair, and foirly laugh it out. No, sir, he was 
irresistible." It was said to be impossible to take 
Foote unawares, or put him out. As he w^as tell- 
ing a story at a fine dinner party, a gentleman, to 
try him, pulled him by the coat-tail, and told him 
that his handkerchief was hanging out. " Thank you, 
sir," said Foote, replacing it, " you know the com- 
pany better than I do," and went on with his story. 

Wilkes's fame ma)^ be rested on his reply to Lord 
Sandwich, and his fling at Thurlow. Jekyll needs 
no trumpeter. Lord Byron says of Colman, " If 
I had to choose, and could not have both at a time, 
I would say, ' Let me begin the evening with Sheri- 
dan, and finish it with Colman.' " Of Curran he 
says, '' I have met him at Holland House ; he beats 
everybody — his imagination is beyond human, and 
his humor (it is difficult to define what is wit) per- 
•fect. Then he has fifty faces, and twice as many 
voices, when he mimics." This, we may add, was 



414 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

Hook's great charm. His best stories were dramatic 
representations a la Mathews^ little inferior to that 
fine observer's " At Homes." 

Why, again, since Mr. Jesse has gone back so far, 
did he not go back a little farther, and mention the 
old Earl of Norwich — a singular illustration of the 
fickleness of taste, and the truth of the maxim, 
'' A jest's prosperity lies in the ear of him who hears 
it." He was the acknowledged wit of Charles the 
First's court, but was voted a dead bore when he 
attempted to resume his wonted place at Whitehall, 
after the Restoration. 

It should be remembered, moreover — to be placed 
on the opposite column of the account — that high 
reputation in one line may sometimes prevent a man 
from acquiring much in another; not merely because 
of the prevalent dislike to pluralities, but because 
the less is merged in the greater. Thus it was ad- 
mirably said of Sir James Mackintosh, b}^ the Rev. 
Sydney Smith, " that he had not only humor, but 
wit also ; at least, new and sudden relations of ideas 
flashed across his mind in reasoning, and produced 
the same effect as wit, aiid would have been called 
wit^ if a se7tse of their utility and impoi'tance had 
not ofteji overpowered the admiration of novelty T 
Wilberforce, speaking of Pitt, said, " He was the wit- 
tiest man I ever knew, and (what was quite peculiar 
to himself) had at all times his wit under entire 
control. Others appeared struck by the unwonted 
association of brilliant images, but every possible 
combination of ideas seemed always present to his 
mind, and he could at once produce whatever he de- 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 415 

sired. I was one of those who met to spend an even- 
ing in memory of Shakespeare, at the Boar's Head, 
Eastcheap. Many professed wits were present, but 
Pitt was the most amusing of the party, and the readi- 
est and most apt in the required allusions." 

In addition to Selwyn's other places, the voice of 
his contemporaries conferred on him that of receiver 
general of waif and stray jokes — a sufficient proof 
that he had plenty of his own ; for as D'Alembert 
sarcastically observed to the Abbe Voisenan, who 
complained that he was unduly charged with the 
absurd sayings of others " Monsietir V Abbe^ on ne 
j)rete qiiaux riches'' Selwyn's droits^ in respect 
of his anomalous office, were not limited to the clubs. 
Lord Holland writes in 1770, " As the newspapers 
impute so much wit to you, I hope they give you 
the invention of that pretty motto they have jDut upon 
Lord Carlisle's cap." Lord Carlisle, in 1776 — 
" What the witty Mr. G. S. says in the newspapers 
is admirable about the red-hot poker, though I like 
Dii's placuit better." Lord March, in 1767 — '' The 
king talked of you at his dressing, and told me 
something that you had said of the Macaronis that 
he thought very good." It was Mr. Jesse's duty as 
editor to find out what these good things were ; but 
he leaves us in entire ignorance regarding them. At 
the same time, we must do him the justice to say, 
that he has brought together quite enough to support 
Selwyn's reputation, and render superfluous the gQW- 
i erally just remark with which he prefaces them. " No 
task can be more disappointing in its result tlian 
that of collecting the scattered bon-mots of a man 



^^l6 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

of professed wit, with a view to prove tliat his rep- 
utation is well deserved. Many of his best sayings 
have, probably, been lost to us ; others, perhaps, 
have suffered in the narrative ; and, moreover, the 
charm of manner, which must greatly have enhanced 
their value at the moment they were uttered, can 
now, of course, only be taken on credit." 

According to Walpole, it was Selwyn's habit to 
turn up the w4iites of his eyes, and assume an ex- 
pression of demureness, when giving utterance to 
a droll thought ; and Wraxall says, that the effect 
of his witticisms was greatly enhanced by his listless, 
drowsy manner. Nor is this all. What makes a 
man like Selwyn the delight of his contemporaries, 
is that lightness, richness, and elasticity of mind, 
which invests the commonest incidents with amus- 
ing or inspiriting associations, lights intuitively on 
the most attractive topics, grasps them one moment, 
lets them go the next, and, in a word, never suffers 
companionship to become tiresome, or conversation 
to grow dull. He may do tliis without uttering any- 
thing that will be generally recognized as wit. 

We shall here quote some of the best of Selwyn's 
witticisms and pleasantries : they occupy little room, 
and there is nothing more provoking than to be told 
of " the well-known anecdote " which one does not 
know. 

When a subscription was proposed for Fox, and 
some one was observing that it would require some 
delicacy, and wondering how Fox would take it, — 
" Take it.'' Why, quarterly^ to be sure." 

When one of the Foley family crossed the Chan- 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 417 

nel to avoid his creditors — "It is a pass over that 
will not be much relished by the Jews." 

When Fox was boasting of having prevailed on 
the French court to give up the gum trade — " As 
you have permitted the French to draw your teeth^ 
they would be fools, indeed, to quarrel with you 
about your gitjnsy 

When Walpole, in allusion to the sameness of the 
system of politics continued in the reign of George 
the Third, observed, " But there is nothing new un- 
der the sun." •' No," said Selvvyn, " nor under the 
grandsonr One night, at White's, observing the 
postmaster-general. Sir Everard Favvkener, losing a 
large sum of money at piquet, Selwyn, pointing to 
the successful player, remarked, " See how he is 
robbing the mail ! " 

On another occasion, in 1756, observing Mr. Pon- 
sonby, the Speaker of the Irish House of Commons, 
tossing about bank bills at a hazard table at New- 
market — '"Look how easily the speaker passes the 
money bills'' 

The beautiful Lady Coventry was exhibiting to 
him a splendid new dress, covered with large silver 
spangles, the size of a shilling, and inquired of him 
whether he admired her taste, " Why," he said, 
" you will be chaiige for a guinea'' 

This bears a strong resemblance to one of Lord 
Mansfield's judicial pleasantries. Serjeant Davy was 
cross-examining a Jew at great length, in order to 
prove his insufficiency as bail. The sum was small, 
and the Jew was dressed in a suit of clothes bedizened 
with silver lace. Lord Mansfield at length interfered 
27 



4l8 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

— "Come, come, brother Davy, don't you see the 
man would burn for the money ? " 

At the sale of the effects of the minister, Mr. Pel- 
ham, Selwyn, pointing to a silver dinner-service, ob- 
served, '' Lord, how many toads have been eaten off 
these plates ! " 

A namesake of Charles Fox having been hung at 
Tyburn, Fox inquired of Selwyn whether he had at- 
tended the execution — " No, I make a point of never 
frequenting rehearsals.'"' 

A fellow-passenger in a coach, imagining from his 
appearance that he was suffering from illness, kept 
wearying him with good-natured inquiries as to the 
state of his health. At length, to the repeated ques- 
tion of "How are you now, sir?" Selwyn replied, 
" Very well, I thank you ; and I mean to continue so 
for the rest of the journey." 

He was one day walking with Lord Pembroke, 
when they were besieged by a number of young chim- 
ney-sweepers, who kept plaguing them for money. 
At length Selwyn made them a low bow. "I have 
often," he said, " heard of the sovereignty of the peo- 
ple ; I suppose your Highnesses are in court mourn- 
ing." 

"On Sunday last," sajs Walpole, "George Selwyn was 
strolling home to dinner at half an hour after four. He saw 
my Lady Townshend's coach stop at Caraccioli's chapel. 
He watched, saw her go in; her footman laughed; he fol- 
lowed. She went up to the altar, a woman brought her a 
cushion; she knelt, crossed herself, and prayed. He stole 
up and knelt by her. Conceive her face, if you can, when 
she turned and found him close to her. In his demure 
voice he said, ' Pray, madam, how long has j'our ladyship 
left the pale of our church.?' She looked furious, and made 
no answer. Next day he went to her, and she turned it off 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. . 419 

upon curiosity; but is anything more natural? No, she cer- 
tainly means to go armed with every viaticum; the Church 
of England in one hand, Methodism in the other, and the 
Host in her mouth." 

Wraxall stands godfather to the next : — 

" The late Duke of Qiieensberry, who lived in the most 
intimate friendship with him, told me that Selwyn was pres- 
ent at a public dinner with the mayor and corporation of 
Gloucester, in the year 1758, when the intelligence arrived 
of our expedition having failed before Rochfort. The may- 
or, turning to Selwyn, 'You, sir,' said he, 'who are in the 
ministerial secrets, can, no doubt, inform us of the cause of 
this misfortune. ' Selwyn, though utterly ignorant on the 
subject, 3'et unable to resist the occasion of amusing him- 
self at the inquirer's expense — '1 will tell you, in confi- 
dence, the reason, Mr. Major,' answered he ; ' the fact is, that 
the scaling-ladders prepared for the occasion were found, on 
trial, to be too short.' This solution, which suggested itself 
to him at the moment, was considered by the mayor to be 
perfectly explanatory of the failure, and as such he com- 
municated it to all his friends — not being aware, though 
Selwyn was, that Rochfort lies on the River Charente, some 
leagues from the sea-shore, and that our troops had never 
even eflfected a landing on the French coast." 

Mr. Jesse has omitted the capital reply to the man, 
who, being cut by Selwyn in London, came up and 
reminded him that they had been acquainted at Bath. 
'' I remember it very well ; and when we next meet 
at Bath, I shall be happy to meet you again." 

Once, and once only, was he guilty of verse — 

On a Pair of Shoes found in a Lady's Bed. 
"Well may suspicion shake its head, 

Well may Clarinda's spouse be jealous, 
When the dear wanton takes to bed 
Her very shoes because they're fellows." 

Selwyn died at his house in Cleaveland Row, Jan- 
uary 25, 1791. He had been for many years a severe 
sufferer from gout and dropsy ; and VVilberforce de- 



420 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

scribes him as looking latterly like the wax figure of 
a corpse. He continued to haunt the clubs till within 
a short period before his death ; but Mr. Jesse assures 
us that he died penitent, and that the Bible was fre- 
quentl)' read to him at his own request during his last 
illness. By his will he gave thirty-three thousand 
pounds to Maria Fagniani ; one hundred pounds each 
to his two nephews ; his wardrobe and thirty pounds 
a year to his valet ; and the residue of his property to 
the Duke of Qiieensberry, with the exception of Lud- 
gershall, which was entailed on the Tov/nshend fami- 
ly. Mr. Jesse quotes some lines from a poetical 
tribute published soon after his death, in which the 
Graces are invoked to fulfil several appropriate du- 
ties : — 

" And fondly dictate to a faithful IMuse 
Tho prime distinction of the friend they lose, 
'Twcis social wit, whicli, never kindling strife, 
Blazed in the small, sweet courtesies of life." 

Had we been at the writer's elbow, we should have 
suggested sJione or glowed in preference to blazed. 

Walpole, writing to Miss Berry, on the day of Sel- 
wyn's death, says, " I am on the point of losing, or 
have lost, my oldest acquaintance and friend, George 
Selwyn, who was yesterday at the extremity. These 
misfortunes, though they can be so but for a short 
time, are very sensible to the old: but him I really 
loved, not only for his infinite wit, but for a thousand 
good qualities." 

Again: "Poor Selwyn is gone, to my sorrow; 
and no wonder Ucalegon feels it ! " 

The heartlessness of the French set to which Sel- 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 



421 



wyn and Walpole belonged is beyond a question. 
Madame du Defland's colloquy with one lover, as to 
the cause of their fifty years' unbroken harmony, and 
her behavior on the death of another, are not invented 
pleasantries, but melancholy facts. Yet either we 
were wrong in supposing that the malady was in- 
fectious, and Miss Berry was right in her generous 
and able vindication of her friend, or Selwyn pos- 
sessed the peculiar talismanic power of kindling and 
fixing the affections of his associates ; for not only 
does Walpole invariably mention him when living, 
and mourn over him when dead, in terms of heartfelt 
sincerity, but the same influence appears to have 
operated on one whom (possibly with equal injus- 
tice) we should have suspected of being, in his own 
despite, a little hardened by a long course of selfish 
indulgences — Lord March. Here are a few, and but 
a few, of the proofs : — 

"As to your banker," says his lordship, " I will call there 
to-morrow; make yourself easy about that, for I have threfe 
thousand pounds now at Cout'ts'. There will be no bank- 
ruptcj' without we are both ruined at the same time. How 
can you think, my dear George, — and I hope you do not 
think, — that anjbodj^ or anything, can make a tracasserie 
between you and me! I take it ill that you even talk of it, 
which you do in the letter I had by Ligonier. I must be 
the poorest creature upon earth, — after having known you 
so long, and always as the best and sincerest friend that any 
one ever had, — if any one alive can make any impression 
upon me when you are concerned. I told you, in a letter some 
time ago, that I depended more upon the continuance of our 
friendship than anytiiing else in the world, which I certainly 
do, because I have so many reasons to know you, and I am 
sure I know myself." 

This speaks well for both head and heart : and 
how much unhappiness would be prevented by the 



422 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

universal adoption of the principle — never to listen 
to, much less believe, the alleged unkindness of a 
friend. All of us have our dissatisfied, complaining, 
uncongenial moments, when we may let drop words 
utterly at variance with the habitual suggestions of 
our hearts. These are repeated from design or care- 
lessness ; then come complaints and explanations ; 
confidence is destroyed ; " the credulous hope of mu- 
tual minds is over ; " and thus ends at once the solace 
of a life. 

Lord March's letters are, on the whole, the most 
valuable in the collection — most characteristic of the 
writer, and most redolent of the times. This unfold- 
ing of his private relations and inmost feelings is 
highly favorable to him. As we see him now, he is 
the very impersonation of his class — shrewd, sensi- 
ble, observing, generous, and afiectionate, amid all 
his profligacy ; with talents uncultivated, because cul- 
tivation was not the passion of that age, but amply 
sufficient to make him a president of the council or 
first lord of the admiralty in this. His letters are 
dashed off' in clear, manly, unaffected language, on 
the spur of the occasion ; and though they are ac- 
tually better written than those of many of his noble 
contemporaries who pretended to literature, it is ob- 
vious that the last thing he ever thought of was the 
style. Walpole's are epistolary compositions ; Lord 
March's are letters in the ordinary acceptation of the 
term. In their pregnant brevity, they often resemble 
Swift's hasty dottings down of public events, or pri- 
vate chit-chat in the journal to Stella. 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 433 

" November, 1766. 
" My DEAR George : I intended to have written to you 
last Tuesday, but we sat so late at the House of Lords that 
I had no time. It was a dull debate, though it lasted a great 
while. Lord Chatham spoke very well, and with a great 
deal of temper, and great civility towards the Duke of Bed- 
ford; who spoke and approved of the measure at the time 
of laying the embargo, because of the necessity; but com- 
plained of Parliament not being called sooner, because what 
had been done was illegal, and only to be justified from ne- 
cessity, which was the turn of the whole debate. Lord 
Mansfield trimmed in his usual manner, and avoided declar- 
ing his opinion, though he argued for the illegality. Lord 
Camden attacked him very close upon not speaking out his 
opinion, and declared strongly for the legality. Upon the 
whole, I think we t^hall have very little to do in Parliament, 
and your attendance will be very little wanted." 

This was Lord Chatham's first appearance in the 

House of Lords. In letters dated the same month 

we find — 

"Monday, 19th November, 1766. 

"My dear George: For fear that I should not have 
any other moment to write you, I write this in the king's 
rooms. I was obliged to dress early to come here, it being 
the princess's birthda3\ I dine at Lord Hertford's, which, 
with the ball at night, will take up the whole day; you 
know that he is chamberlain. The Duke of Bedford comes 
to-day, and, on Wednesday, I suppose they will kiss hands; 
but nothing is known. Everybody agrees that this resig- 
nation of the Cavendishes is, of all the resignations, the 
most foolish; and I hear they begin already to repent of it. 
They make a fine opportunity for Chatham to strengthen 
his administration. They want T. Pelham to resign ; Ash- 
burnham certainly will now. The only ^people that do iv ell 
are those that never resign ; which Lord Hertford seems to 
have found out long ago. Saunders and Keppel resign to- 
morrow. " 

" November, 1766. 

"My dear George: Jack Shelly has kissed hands for 
Lord Edgecombe's place. He was offered to be of the bed- 
chamber, which he has refused, and wants to have the post- 
office, which they won't give him. I find it is imagined that 
ive shall be obliged to send troops into North America to bring 
them to a proper obedience. It is whispered about that the 



434 THE Wr^HING-CAP PAPERS. 

Cavendishes and Rockingham's friends will take the first 
opportunity thej'can to be hostile to government; and like- 
wise, that Norton and Wedderburne will certainly oppose : 
if these things are so, we may perhaps have some more con- 
vulsions in the state." 

Such letters are excellent correctives of history ; 
hut we are not writing history just now, and must 
turn to those which throw light on manners : — 

" HiNCHiNBROOKE, Thursday (1770). 

"My dear George: Our party at Wakefield went off 
very well. We had hunting, racing, whist, and quinze. 
My horse won, as I expected, but the odds were upon him, 
so that I betted very little. 

"After hunting on Monday I went to Ossory's, where I 
lay in my way here. He came with me, and went back yes- 
terday. I imagine he would have liked to have staid if 
Lady Ossory had not been alone. They live but a dull life, 
and there must be a great deal of love on both sides not to 
tire. I almost promised to go back for Bedford races, but 
believe I shall not. T go to Newmarket to-night, and to 
London to-morrow. Sandwich's house is full of people, and 
all sorts of things going forward. Miss Ray does the honors 
perfectly M^ell. While I am writing they are all upon the 
grass plot at a foot-race." 

To make this intelligible, we must go behind the 
scenes. Wakefield Lodge was the seat of the minis- 
ter, Duke of Grafton. Lady Ossory was his ci-de- 
vant duchess. She had divorced him on account of 
his intimacy with Nancy Parsons, described by Wal- 
pole as " one of the commonest creatures in London ; 
once much liked, but out of date. He is certainly 
erown immensely attached to her; so much so, that 
it has put an end to all his decorum." The culpable 
excesses into which the duke was hurried by his pas- 
sion are stigmatized by Junius: "It is not the pri- 
vate indulgence, but the public insult, of which 1 
complain. The name of Miss Parsons would hardly 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 425 

have been known, if the first lord of the treasury had 
not led her in triumph through the opera-house, even 
in the presence of the queen." Hinchinbrooke, from 
which the letter is dated, was the seat of Lord Sand- 
wich, another cabinet minister. Miss Ray, who did 
the honors so well, was his mistress — shot at Covent 
Garden in 1779. The story is told by Dr. Warner in 
a paragraph which may serve as a pattern of goos 
condensation : — 

"The history of Hackman, Miss Ray's murderer, is this 
He was recruiting at Huntingdon; appeared at the ball-, 
was asked by Lord Sandwich to Hinchinbrooke; was in- 
troduced to Miss Ray; became violently enamoured of her; 
made proposals, and was sent into Ireland, where his regi- 
ment was. He sold out; came back on purpose to be near 
the object of his affection ; took orders, but could not bend 
the inflexible fair in a black coat more than in a red. He 
could not live without her. He meant only to kill himself, 
and that in her presence; but seeing her coquet it at the 
play with a young Irish Templar, Macnamara, he determined 
suddenly to despatch her too. He is to be tried on Friday, 
and hanged on Monday." 

The Morning Post, for April 9, 1799, has this an- 
nouncement : " When the news of the above mis- 
fortune was carried to the admiralty, it was received 
by her noble admirer with the utmost concern. He 
wept exceedingly, and lamented, with every other 
token of grief, the interruption of a connection which 
liad lasted for seventeen years, with great and unin- 
terrupted felicity on both sides." 

The catching character of notorious insanity has 
often been remarked. While *the Hackman aftair 
was the popular topic, it seems that no woman, young 
or old, ugly or pretty, could venture forth without 
alarm. Lady Ossory writes, — 



426 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

*' This Asiatic weather has certainlj' affected our cold con- 
stitutions. The Duchess of B is afraid of being shot 

wherever she goes. A man has followed Miss Clavering on 
foot from the East Indies; is quite mad; and scenes are 
daily expected even in the drawing-room. Another man 
has sworn to shoot a Miss Something, niinporte, if she did 
not run away with him from the opera. 

" Sir Joshua Reynolds has a niece who is troubled with 
one of these passionate admirers, to whom she has refused 
her hand and her door. He came, a few days since, to Sir 
Joshua's, asked if she was at home, and on being answered 
in the negative, he desired the footman to tell her to take 
care, for he was determined to ravish her (pardon the word) 
whenever he met her. Keep our little friend (Mie Mie) at 
Paris whilst this mania lasts, for no age will be spared to be 
in fashion, and I am sure Mie Mie is quite as much in dan- 
ger as the person I quoted in my first page" 

Before quoting those letters of Lord March which 
refer to topics of a strictly personal character, we 
will mention the few authentic particulars that have 
been recorded of him. 

He was born in 1725, succeeded his father in the 
earldom of March in 1731? his mother in the earldom 
of Ruglen in 17485 ^"d his cousin in the dukedom of 
Qtieensberry in 1778? being then in his fifty-third 
year. Few men of his day acquired greater noto- 
riety, or were more an object of inquiry and specu- 
lation ; yet he took little part in political events, ex- 
cept so far as his own interests were affected by them, 
and it would have been t)etter for his reputation had 
he taken none. When the king's malady grew se- 
rious, in 1788, he gave in his allegiance to Fox, and, on 
the recovery of his royal master, was unceremoniously 
dismissed from his situation of lord of the bedcham- 
ber, which he had held for twenty-eight years, not- 
withstanding the known profligacy of his life. Wrax- 
all says he took a journey to Windsor to learn the 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 427 

exact condition of the king, but was misled by Dr. 
Warren. The mistake mattered little. His business 
was pleasure, his passions were women and the turf; 
and he contrived to gratify both, without impairing 
either his fortune or his constitution. As regards the 
turf, he was thoroughly versed in all its mysteries, 
and seldom indulged in any sort of gaming uncon- 
nected with it, or relating to matters where any 
undue advantage could be taken of him. On the 
contrary, he was generally on the lookout for oppor- 
tunities of turning his own shrew^dness and coolness 
to account. A curious instance is related in Edge- 
worth's memoirs. 

Lord March had noticed a coach maker's journey- 
man running with a wheel, and on minuting him by 
a stop watch, found that he actually ran a consider- 
able distance faster with it than most men could run 
unencumbered. A waiter in Betty's fruit shop was 
famous for speed. Lord March adroitly introduced 
the topic, and maintaining what appeared a paradox, 
easily got bets to a large amount, that the waiter 
would run faster for a mile than any one could run 
with the hind-wheel of his lordship's carriage, then 
standing at the door. But he committed a trifling over- 
sight. The wheel was lower than the wheel the man 
was used to run with ; and the biter would have been 
bit, had not Sir Francis Delaval suggested an expe- 
dient. The night before the match, planks were ob- 
tained from the Board of Works, and a raised groove, 
for the wheel to run in, was constructed across the 
course. The journeyman won, and the Jockey Club 
decided in Lord March's favor. Another of his bets 



428 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

came before the court of King's Bench. He had laid 
a wager of five hundred guineas with young Mr. 
Pigot, that old Mr. Pigot (the father) would die be- 
fore Sir William Codrington. Old Mr. Pigot died 
the same morning before the making of the wager, 
but neither of the parties were acquainted with the 
fact. The court held that the dutiful and hopeful 
heir must pay. A startling example of this style of 
bet is mentioned by Walpole. " I, t'other night at 
White's, found a very remarkable entry in our very 

remarkable wager-book. Lord — ■ — bets Sir 

twenty guineas that Nash outlives Gibber. J^ow 
odd that these two old creatures should live to see 
both their zvagerers put an end to their own lives I " 
Lord March's rate of betting was never very high. 
The largest sum he appears to have won or lost at 
any race or meeting, during the period over which 
this correspondence extends, was four thousand one 
hundred pounds, and this is mentioned as a rare oc- 
currence. 

Lie also managed his intercourse with the fair sex 
in such a manner as to prevent them from interfering 
with his peace, or even his caprices ; and few things 
are more amusing than his mode of keeping his oc- 
casional liaisons from clashing with his permanent 
ones — for we are obliged to speak of both classes in 
the plural number. His parting with one of his fa- 
vorites is pecuh'arly touching : — 

*' I am just preparing to conduct the poor little Tondino to 
Dover. Mj heart is so full that I can neither think, speak, 
nor write. How I shall be able to part with her, or bear to 
come back to this house, I do not know. The sound of her 
voice fills my eyes with afresh tears. My dear George, yai 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 439 

le ccBtir si serre que je ne suis bon a ^present qti" a pleurei'. 
Take all the care jou can of her. ye la recommende a vous, 
my best and only real friend." 

In return for the care Selwyn was to take of the 
Tondino, Lord March, it seems, was to keep an eye 
to Raton. 

"I wrote to you last night, but I quite forgot Raton. I 
have not had him to see me to-day, having been the whole 
morning in the city with Lady H. ; but I have sent to your 
maid, and she says that her little king is perfectly well and 
in great spirits." 

Besides the Tondino, Selwyn had the principal 
care of the Rena, a beautiful Italian, who stood in 
nearly the same relation to Lord March as Madame 
de Pompadour to Louis the Fifteenth. That sagacious 
favorite, it will be remembered, troubled herself very 
little about the Fare aux Cerfs so long as she re- 
tained the chief place in his Majesty's confidence. 
Queen Caroline is said to have preserved her in- 
fluence over George the Second by the same policy. 
The Rena's prudence was put to a severe trial by the 
arrival of Signora Zamperini, a noted dancer and 
singer, in 1766. His lordship writes to Selwyn in 
Paris, — 

" I wish I had set out immediately after Newmarket, 
which I believe I should have done, if I had not taken a 
violent fancy for one of the opera girls. This passion is a 
little abated, and I hope it will be quite so before you and 
the Rena come over, else I fear it will interrupt our society. 
But whatever is the case, as I have a real friendship and af- 
fection for the Rena, I shall show her every mark of regard 
and consideration, and be vastly happy to see her. I con- 
sider her as a friend, and certainly as one that I love very 
much ; and as such, I hope she will have some indulgence 
for my follies." • 



430 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

A few days afterwards, — 

"The Rena must be mad if she takes anything of this 
sort in a serious way. If she does, there is an end of our 
society- If she does not, we shall go on as we did. I am 
sure I have all the regard in the world for her, for I love her 
vastly, and I shall certainl}' contrive to make her as easy 
and as happy as I can. I like this little girl, bzit hovj long 
this liking -will last I cannot tell ; it maj' increase, or be 
quite at an end, before you arrive." 

His lordship had not attained to equal proficiency 
with Madame de Girardin's hero : " Albert ne vien- 
dra pas — il est amoureux pour una quinzaine, il me 
I'a dit, et il est toujours a la minute dans ces choses- 
la." In a subsequent letter we find all three (the 
Tondino, the Rena, and the Zamperini) mixed up 
together. 

"You see what a situation I am in with my little Buffa. 
She is the prettiest creature that ever was seen ; in short, I 
like her vastly, and she likes me, because I give her mojiey. 

" I have had a letter from the Tondino to-day. She tells 
me that she never passed her time so well at Paris as she 
does now. ' Monsieur du Barri est un homtne charmante, et 
nous donne des bals avec dcs Princesses,' Pray, my dear 
George, find out something that will be agreeable to the 
little Teresina. Consult the Rena about it. 

" I shall write two or three words to the Rena by this post. 
I told her, in x^y last letter, that I was supposed to be very 
much in love with the Zamperini, which certainly' would not 
prevent me from being very happy to see her. I have been 
too long accustomed to live with her not to like her, or to be 
able to forget her, and there is nothing that would give me 
more pain than not to be able to live with her upon a foot- 
ing of great intimacy and friendship; but I am always 
afraid of every event inhere tvoinen are concertied — they 
are all so exceedingly 'wrong-headed.'" 

It might be deemed useless, if not impertinent, to 
keep on repeating that obviously wrong things are 
wrong ; but in connection with the next extract, the 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 4^1 

reader should bear in mind that, at the time in ques- 
tion, and for twelve years afterwards, the writer was 
a lord of the bedchamber in the decorous court of 
George the Third and Qiieen Charlotte. 

" I was prevented from writing to you last Friday, by be- 
incr at Newmarket with my little girl. I had the whole 
family and Cocchi. The beauty went with me in my chaise, 
and the rest in the old landau." 

The family consisted of father, mother, and sister. 
"As March finds a difficulty (says Williams) in sep- 
arating her from that rascally garlic tribe, whose very 
existence depends on her beauty, I do not think he 
means to make her what our friend the countess (the 
Rena) was." In another place — "March goes on 
but heavily with his poor child (she was only fifteen). 
He looks miserable, and yet he takes her off in her 
opera dress every night in his chariot." 

Numerous allusions, in these volumes, show that 
Lord March was not devoid of taste for female society 
of a better order. He is repeatedly spoken of as about 
to marry this or that lady of quality ; and Wraxall 
says that he cherished an ardent passion for Miss 
Pelham, the daughter of the minister, who persevered 
in refusing his consent to their union, on account 
of the dissipated habits of the peer. He died un- 
married, and continued his libertine habits till death. 
During the first ten years of the present century, he 
might constantly be seen in the bow-window of his 
house in Piccadilly (now divided into two houses 
occupied by Lord Cadogan and Lord Roseberry), 
examining the street passengers through an eye-glass 
with his remaining eye (it vvas currently stated that 



432 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

the other was of glass), and when a female pedestrian 
struck his fancy, an emissary was instantly despatched 
after her. That no time might be lost, a pony was 
always kept saddled for the purpose. " It is a fact," 
says Wraxall, " that he performed in his own draw- 
ing-room the scene of Paris and the goddesses. This 
classic exhibition took place in his house opposite the 
Green Park." We do not believe that any exhibition 
took place at all — founding our scepticism more on 
the folly than the vice ; yet it is melancholy to think to 
what human nature may be degraded by sensuality. 

A striking illustration of his shrewdness was given 
by Lord Brougham, in his evidence before the Lords' 
Committee on Lord Campbell's libel bill : — 

" The late Duke of Qiieensberry was a great alarmist in 
1792, like many other very noble, very rich, and very honor- 
able men. He thought there was an end of all things, and 
he used to be abusing principally the seditious writings of 
the day, giving them and their authors ill names in great 
abundance and variety, as infamous, detestable, abominable 
— when one day some toad-eater, who attended his person, 
added, ' Ay, indeed, and full of such falsehoods.' ' No,' 
said the duke, ' not falsehoods — they are all so true; that 
is what makes them so abominable and so dangerous.' If 
his grace had felt all that was said on the corruptions of 
Parliament and office to be groundless, he would have let 
them write on in the same strain to the end of time." 

A characteristic trait has been preserved by Mr. 
Wilberforce : — 

" I always observe that the owners of 3'our grand houses 
have some snug corner in which they are glad to shelter 
themselves from their own magnificence.* I remember 
dining, when I was a young man, with the Duke of Queens- 

* "And thus the most luxurious court in Europe, after all its boasted refine- 
ments, was glad to return at last, by this singular contrivance (the table volante 
at Chnisy), to the quiet and privacy of humble life." — Rogers's Poems, ^Icfg. 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 433 

berry, at his Richmond villa. The party was very small 
and select — Pitt, Lord and Lady Chatham, the Duchess of 
Gordon, and George Selwyn (who lived for society, and 
continued in it till he really looked like the waxwork figure 
of a corpse) were amongst the guests. We dined early, 
that some of our party might be ready to attend the opera. 
The dinner was sumptuous, the views from the villa quite 
enchanting, and the Thames in all its glory; but the duke 
looked on with indifference. ' What is there,' he said, ' to 
make so much of in the Thames.-* I am quite tired of it — 
there it goes, flow, flow, flow, always the same.' " 

This is precisely what we should have expected 
from the duke ; and no one was better qualified than 
Mr. Wilberforce to explain why the glorious scene 
before them was a sealed book to the worn volup- 
tuary — why his spirit's eye was blind to it — why 
every simple, innocent, unforced gratification was 
denied to him — and why the full enjoyment of nat- 
ural beauty and sublimity is reserved for men of purer 
lives and higher minds than his. 

The duke's notions of comfort, on which his opin- 
ion was worth having, were expressed in a letter to 
Selwyn : ^ I wish you were here (the place is not 
stated). It is just the house you would wish to be in. 
There is an excellent library, a good -parson^ the 
best English and French cookery you ever tasted, 
strong coffee, and half-crown whist." 

It has been stated that he paid his physicians on 
the plan adopted by the Chinese emperors — so much 
per week for keeping him alive. If so, he cheated 
them ; for the immediate cause of his death was im- 
prudence in eating fruit. He died in iSio, firm and 
self-possessed. His death-bed w^as literally covered 
with unopened billets (more than seventy) from wo- 
men of all classes, which he ordered to be laid on the 

38 



434 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

counterpane as they were brought. His personal 
property exceeded a million, and his will, with its 
twenty-five codicils, was a curious document. He 
left one hundred and fifty thousand pounds and three 
houses to Mie Mie, and made her husband (the late 
Marquis of Hertford, a congenial spirit) his residuary 
legatee. 

Selwyn's most immediate friends and frequent cor- 
respondents, after the duke, were George James (alias 
Gilly) Williams and Lord Carlisle. 

Of Williams little is known. He was the son of 
Peere Williams, the compiler of three volumes of 
chancery cases, highly esteemed by equity lawyers. 
He was connected by marriage with Lord North, 
and in 1774 was appointed receiver-general of ex- 
cise. Selwyn, Edgecumbe, Walpole, and Williams, 
used to meet at stated periods at Strawberry Hill, 
and form what Walpole called his out-of-town party. 
Gilly's letters convey a highly favorable impression 
of his social pleasantry ; and it seems that he soon 
acquired some reputation as a wit. " I have desired 
Lord R. Bertie," he writes in 1751, " to propose me at 
White's. Don't let any member shake his head at 
me for a wit ; for, God knows, he may as well reject 
me for being a giant." 

Frederick, fifth earl of Carlisle, was a remarkable 
man in many ways. He filled some important public 
situations with credit ; and on his being appointed 
lord-lieutenant of Ireland, his intimate friend, Storer, 
writes, " I wish he was secretary of state. It is a 
joke to think it too high a step. I am of the old 
king's opinion, that a 7nan in this country is Jit for 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 435 

any ^lace he can get, and I am sure Carlisle will be 
fit for any place he will take." 

In literature he distinguished himself as a poet ; 
but, unluckily, he is principally known in that capacity 
through Lord Byron, who, in his English Bards 
and Scoth Reviewers, levels twelve unjust and acri- 
monious lines at him. In the first sketch of the 
poem these twelve lines were wanting, and their 
place was occupied by two — 

" On one alone Apollo deigns to smile, 
And crowns a new Roscommon in Carlisle." 

Lord Carlisle had offended his young relation, be- 
tween the writing and the printing of the poem, by 
refusing to introduce him on his taking his seat in the 
House of Lords. Lord Byron afterwards deeply re- 
gretted the injury. There is a beautiful atonement in 
the third canto of Childe Harold ; and in writing, in 
1814, to Mr. Rogers, he thus expresses himself : 
" Is there any chance or possibility of making it up 
with Lord Carlisle, as I feel disposed to do anything, 
reasonable or unreasonable, to effect it?" 

In private life and early youth, Lord Carlisle, en- 
dowed with warm feelings, a lively fancy, and an 
excitable disposition, was peculiarly liable to be led 
astray by the temptations which assail young men of 
rank. In 1769, being then in his twenty-first year, he 
went abroad, desperately in love with some wedded 
fair one. She forms the burden of many a paragraph 
in his letters to Selwyn, who, though nearly thirty 
years older, entered warmly into all his feelings. 

*' I thought I had got the better of that extravagant pas- 
sion, but I find I am relapsed again. I tremble at the con- 



436 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

sequences of the meeting, and yet I have not the courage, 
even in thought, to oppose its temptations. I shall exert all 
the firmness I am capable of, which, God knows, is very lit- 
tle, upon that occasion. If I am received with coolness, I 
shall feel it severely. I shall be miserable if I am made too 
welcome. Good God, what happiness would I not exchange, 
to be able to live with her without loving her more than 
•friendship will allow! Is my picture hung up, or is it in the 
passage with its face turned to the walls.'' " 

From the allusion to the picture, and other indi- 
cations, it is clear that the mysterious lady (who has 
given rise to much surmise) was the beautifnl Lady 
Sarah Bunbury {nee Lennox), "whom it is said his Ma- 
jesty George the Third would have married, had he 
been allowed. His Majesty gave up his own wishes 
for the good of the country, but the impression re- 
mained. Mrs. Pope, the actress, was very like Lady 
Sarah. On one occasion, at the theatre, many years 
after his marriage, the king turned round to the queen 
in a fit of melancholy abstraction, and saitl, pointing 
to Mrs. Pope, " She is like Lady Sarah still." 

Lord Carlisle got the better of this passion, and 
married at twenty-two. It would have been well for 
his peace of mind had he been equally successful in 
getting the better of a still more fatal one for play. 
Letter after letter is filled with good resolutions, but 
the fascination was too strong. The blow came at last. 

"July, 1776. 

" My dear George : I have undone myself, and it is to 
no purpose to conceal from you my abominable madness and 
folly, though perhaps the particulars may not be known to 
the rest of the world. I never lost so much in five times as 
I have done to-night, and am in debt to the house for the 
whole. You may be sure I do not tell you this with an idea 
that you can be of the least assistance to me; it is a great 
deal more than your abilities are equal to. Let me see you, 
though I shall be ashamed to look at you after your good- 
ness to me." 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 437 

This letter is indorsed by Selwyn, " After the loss 
of the ten thousand pounds ; " which, following on 
other losses, appears to have sunk the earl to the low- 
est depths of despondency. 

" / do -protest to you, tJiat I am so tired of my present man- 
ner of passing my time, — hovjcver I may be kept in coiin- 
tena?ice by the niitnber of those in my oxv?i ratik and superior 
fortune, — that I never reflect on it ivithout shame. If they 
will employ me in any part of the world, I will accept the 
employment; let it tear me, as it will, from everything dear 
to me in this country. .... 

" If any ot our expectations should be gratified in the 
winter, I cannot expect anything sufficient to balance the 
expenses of living in London. If I accept anything, I must 
attend Parliament — I must live in London. If I am not 
treated with consideration, I can live here, if that can be 
called living which is wasting the best years of my life in 
obscurity; without society to dispel the gloom of a northern 
climate; left to myself to brood over my follies and indis- 
cretions; to see my children deprived of education by those 
follies and indiscretions; to be forgotten; to lose my tem- 
per; to be neglected; to become cross and morose to those 
whom I have most reason to love ! Except that the welfare 
and interest of others depefid upott my existence, I should not 
Tvish that existence to be of long duration." 

So thought and felt a man apparently possessed of 
every blessing — youth, health, talent, birth, fortune, 
connection, consideration, and domestic ties of the 
most endearing kind — 

"Medio de fonte leponim 
Surgit amari aliquid quod in ipsis floribus angat." 

The very accident (miscalled advantage) of his 
l^osition commends the poisoned chalice to his lips, 
and the Lord of Castle Howard longs for death at 
twenty-seven ! But a truce to reflection till we have 
introduced another, and a more memorable subject for 
it. Lord Carlisle's embarrassments were inextricably 
mixed up with those of Charles James Fox ; and it 



438 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

can therefore hardly be deemed a digression to turn 
at once to the passages in these volumes which relate 
to him. The few letters of his own that occur in 
them are principally remarkable for ease and sim- 
plicity. For example, — 

"Paris, November, 1770. 
" Quantities of cousins visit us ; amongst the rest the Duke 
of Berwick. What an animal it is ! I supped last night 
with Lauzun, Fitz-James, and some others, at what thev call 
a Clolf a rAn^lai'se. It was in a fetite maison of L.auzun's. 
There was Madame Briseau, and two other women. The 
supper was execrably bad. However, the champagne and 
tokaywere excellent; notwithstanding which the fools made 
(ill poficke with bad rum. This club is to meet every Satur- 
day, either here or at Versailles : I am glad to see that we 
cannot be foolisher in point of imitation than they are." 

Principally, through Selwyn's introduction, Fox 

was on a familiar footing with Madame du Defland 

and her set. 

*' Madame GeofFrin m'a ckafite la paltnodie. I dine there 
to-day ; she inquires after you very much. I have supped 
at Madame du DefFand's, who asked me if I was deja sous la 
ttit'ele de M. Selvin P I boasted that I was." 

In August 23, 1 771, he writes what is most worthy 

of notice, as follows : — 

" I am reading Clarendon, but scarcely get on faster than 
you did with 3'our Charles the Fifth. I think the style bad, 
and that he has r good deal of the old woman in his way 
of thinking, biU hates the of posite party so much that it gives 
one a kind of partiality for him." 

His marvellous powers as a debater were remarked 

very soon after his first entrance into Parliament. In 

March, 1770, his delighted father writes to Selwyn, — 

"You know by this time that your panegyric upon 
Charles came about an hour after I had wrote mine to you 
of the 9th. He writes word that upon February the 12th he 
spoke very ill. I do not mind that, and when he speaks so 
well, as to be, as Lady Mary says, the wonder of the age, it 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 439 

does not give me so much pleasure as what you very justly, 
I think, tell me de sou cceur. And jet that may not signify. 
I have been honest and good-natured, nor can I repent of 
it: though convinced now that honesty is not the best 
policy, and that good-nature does not meet with the return 
it ought to do." 

It appears from a letter addressed by Lord Carlisle 

to Lady Holland (Fox's mother), in 1773, that he 

had become security for Fox to the amount of fifteen 

or sixteen thousand pounds ; and a letter to Selwyn, 

in 1777? P^ts the ruinous character of their gambling 

transactions in the strongest light. Lord Ilchester 

(Fox's cousin) had lost thirteen thousand pounds at 

one sitting to Lord Carlisle, who offered to take three 

thousand pounds down. Nothing was paid ; but ten 

years afterwards, when Lord Carlisle pressed for his 

money, he complains that an attempt was made to 

construe the offer into a remission of ten thousand 

pounds : — 

"The only way, in honor, that Lord I. could have ac- 
cepted my otFer, would have been by taking some steps to 
pay the three thousand pounds. I remained in a state of 
uncertainty, I think, for nearly three years; but his taking 
no notice of it during that time convinced me that he had 
no intention of availing himself of it. Charles Fox was 
also at a much earlier period clear that he never meant to 
accept it. There is also great justice in the behavior of the 
family in passing by the instantaneous payment of, I be- 
lieve, five thousand pounds to Charles, won at the same 
sitting, without anj' observations. At one period of the 
play, I retnember., there was a balance in favor of one of 
those gentlemeti, but ofzvhich I protest I do not remember, 
of about fifty thousand^ 

At the time in question. Fox was hardly eighteen. 
The following- letter from Lord Carlisle, written i 



m 



1 77 1, contains some highly interesting information 
respecting the youthful habits, and already vast intel- 
lectual pre-eminence of this memorable statesman : — 



440 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

"It gives me great pain to hear that Charles begins to be 
unreasonably impatient at losing. I fear it is the prologue 
to much fretfulness of temper; for disappointment in rais- 
ing money, and any serious reflections upon his situation, 
■will (in spite of his affected spirits and dissipation, which 
sit very well upon Richard) occasion him many disagreeable 
moments. They will be the more painful when he reflects 
that he is not following the natural bent of his genius; for 
that would lead him to all serious inquiry and laudable pur- 
suits, which he has in some measure neglected, to hear Lord 
Bolingbroke's applause, and now is obliged to have recourse 
to it and play, to hinder him from thinking how he has 
perverted the ends for which he was born. I believe there 
never -was a ferso7i yet created who had the faculty of reason- 
ing like him. His judgments are tiever -wrong; his decisiofi 
is fortned quicker thatt any m.an''s I ever conversed tvith ; and 
he never seems to mistake but in his own affairs.'' 

Lord Carlisle's fears proved groundless in one re- 
spect. Fox's sweetness of temper remained with him 
to the last ; but it is most painful to think how much 
mankind has lost through his recklessness. There is no 
saying what might not have been effected by such a 
man, had he simply followed the example of his great 
rival in one respect. " We played a good deal at 
Goosetree's," says Wilberforce, " and I well remem- 
ber the intense earnestness which Pitt displayed when 
joining in these games of chance. He perceived 
their increasing fascination, and soon after abandoned 
it forever." Wilberforce's own cure is thus recorded 
by his biographers, on the authority of his private 
journal : '^ * We can have no play to-night,' com- 
plained some of the party at the club, ' for St. An- 
drew is not here to keep bank.' ' Wilberforce,' said 
Mr. Bankes, who never joined himself, ' if you will 
keep it I will give )^ou a guinea.' The playful chal- 
lenge was accepted, but as the game grew deep, he 
rose the winner of six hundred pounds. Much of this 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 44I 

was lost by those who were only heirs to future 
fortunes, and could not therefore meet such a call 
without inconvenience. The pain he felt at their 
annoyance cured him of a taste which seemed but too 
likely to become predominant." 

Goosetree's being then almost exclusively com- 
posed of incipient orators and embryo statesmen, the 
call for a gaming-table there may be regarded as a 
decisive proof of the universal prevalence of the vice. 
But most of these were the friends and followers of 
Pitt; and when his star gained the ascendant, idle- 
ness was no longer the order of the day among poli- 
ticians, and rising young men gave up faro and haz- 
ard for Blackstone and Adam Smith. We know of 
no candidate for high office, entering public life after 
17S4, who did not affect prudence and propriety ; and 
probably we sliall never again see a parliamentary 
leader aspire, like Bolingbroke, 

'• To shine a Tully and a Wilmot too." 

Gaming, however, continued a blot on our manners 
and morals for many years afterwards ; and it may 
not be uninstructive to trace its progress and decline. 
During the whole of the last century, gaming of some 
sort was an ordinary amusement for both sexes in the 
best society.* Till near the commencement of the 
present, the favorite game was faro ; and as it was a 
decided advantage to hold the bank, masters and mis- 



* In General Burgoyne's play of The Heiress, Mrs. Blandish exclaims, 
" Time thrown away in the country ! as if women of fashion left London to turn 
freckled shepherdesses. No, no ; cards, cards and backgammon, are the de- 
lights of rural life ; and, slightly as you may think of my skill, at the year's end 
I am no inconsiderable sharer in the pin-money of my society." 



442 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

tresses of noble houses, less scrupulous than Wilber- 
force, frequently volunteered to fleece and amuse their 
company. But scandal having made busy with the 
names of some of them, it became usual to hire a 
professed gamester at five or ten guineas a night to 
set up a table for the evening, as we should hire La- 
blache for a concert, or Weippart for a ball. Faro 
gradually dropped out of fashion ; macao took its 
place ; hazard was never wanting, and whist began 
to be played for stakes which would have satisfied 
Fox himself, who, though it was calculated that he 
might have netted four or five thousand a year by 
games of skill, complained that they afforded no ex- 
citement. 

Watier's club, in Piccadilly, was the resort of the 
macao players. It was kept by an old inaitre cV hotel 
of George the Fourth, a character in his way, who 
took a just pride in the cookery and wines of his es- 
tablishment. All the brilliant stars of fashion (and 
fashion was power then) frequented it, with Brum- 
mell for their sun. " Poor Brummell dead, in misery 
and idiocy, at Caen ! and I remember him in all his 
glory, cutting his jokes after the opera at White's, in 
a black velvet great-coat, and a cocked hat on his 
well-powdered head." * Nearly the same turn of re- 
flection is suggested as we run over the names of his 
associates. Almost all of them were ruined ; three 
out of four irretrievably. Indeed, it was the forced 
expatriation of its supporters that caused the club to 
be broken up. During the same period (from 1810 

* Private MS. 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 443 

to 1815 or thereabouts) there was a great deal of high 
play at White's and Brookes', particularly whist. At 
Brookes' figured some remarkable characters — as 
Tippoo Smith, by common consent the best whist- 
player of his day ; and an old gentleman nicknamed 
Neptune, from his having once flung himself into the 
sea in a fit of despair at being, as he thought, ruined. 
He was fished out in time, found he was not ruined, 
and played on during the remainder of his life. 

The most distinguished player at White's was the 
nobleman who was presented at the salon in Paris 
as Le Wellington des youeurs ; and he richly mer- 
ited the name, if skill, temper, and the most daring 
courage, are titles to it. The greatest genius, how- 
ever, is not infallible. He once lost three thousand 
four hundred pounds at whist by not remembering 
that the seven of hearts was in. He played at haz- 
ard for the highest stakes that any one could be got to 
play with him, and at one time was supposed to have 
won nearly a hundred thousand pounds ; but it all 
went, along with a great deal more, at Crockford's. 

There was also a great deal of play at Graham's, 
the Union, the Cocoa-Tree, and other clubs of the 
second order in point of fashion. Here large sums 
were hazarded with equal rashness, and remarkable 
characters started up. Among the most conspicuous 
was the late Colonel Aubrey, who literally passed his 
life at play. He did nothing else, morning, noon, 
and night ; and it was computed that he had paid 
more than sixty thousand pounds for card-money. 
He was a very fine player at all games, and a shrewd, 
clever man. He had been twice to India, and made 



444 '^^^^ WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

two fortunes. It was said that he lost the first on his 
way home, transferred himself from one ship to 
another without landing, went back, and made the 
second. His life was a continual alternation between 
poverty and wealth ; and he used to say, the greatest 
pleasure in life is winning at cards — the next great- 
est, losing. 

For several years deep play went on at all these 
clubs, — fluctuating both as to locality and amount, — 
till by degrees it began to flag. It had got to a low 
ebb when Mr. Crockford came to London, and laid 
the foundation of the most colossal fortune that was 
ever made by play. He began by taking Watier's old 
club-house, in partnership w^ith a man named Taylor. 
They set up a hazard-bank, and won a great deal of 
money, but quarrelled, and separated at the end of 
the first year. Taylor continued where he was, had a 
bad year, and broke. Crockford removed to St. 
James' Street, had a good year, and instantly set about 
building the magnificent club-house which bears his 
name. It rose like a creation of Aladdin's lamp ; and 
the genii themselves could hardly have surpassed the 
beauty of the internal decorations, or furnished a more 
accomplished viaitre d'hotel than Ude. To make 
the company as select as possible, the establishment 
was regularly organized as a club, and the election of 
members vested in a committee. " Crockford's" be- 
came the rage, and the votaries of fashion, whether 
they liked play or not, hastened to enroll themselves. 
The Duke of Wellington was an original member, 
though (unlike Blucher, who repeatedly lost every- 
thing he had at play) the great captain was never 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 445 

r 

known to play deep at any game but war or politics. 
Card-tables were regularly placed, and whist was 
played occasionally ; but the aim, end, and final cause 
of the whole was the hazard-bank, at which the pro- 
prietor took his nightly stand, prepared for all comers. 
There was a recognized limit, at which (after losing 
a certain sum) he might declare the bank broke for 
the niglit ; but he knew his business too well to stop. 
The speculation, it is hardly necessary to add, was 
eminently successful. During several years, every- 
thing that anybody had to lose and cared to risk, was 
swallowed up. Le Wellington des Joueurs lost twen- 
ty-three thousand pounds at a sitting, beginning at 
twelve at night, and ending at seven the following even- 
ing. He and three other noblemen could not have lost 
less, sooner or later, than a hundred thousand pounds 
apiece. Others lost in proportion (or out of propor- 
tion) to their means ; but we leave it to less occupied 
moralists and better calculators to say how many ruined 
families went to make Mr. Crockford a millionnaire 
— iox 2i millionnaire \\Q was and is, in the English 
sense of the term, after making the largest possible 
allowance for bad debts. A vast sum, perhaps half a 
million, is due to him ; but as he won all his debtors 
were able to raise, and easy credit was the most fatal 
of his lures,* we cannot make up our minds to con- 

* Brookes was equally accommodating : — 

"From liberal Brookes, whose speculative skill 
Is hasty credit and a distant bill ; 
Who, nursed in clubs, disdains a vulgar trade, 
Exults to trust and blushes to be paid." 

Verses, From, the Hon. Charles yames Fox, partridge- shoot 171^, to the Hon. 
jfoh?i Townshend, cruising ; by Tickeil, whom Mr. Jesse praises for his poefn of 
"Anticipation." 



44<5 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

dole with him on that amount, frightful though it be. 
He retired, three or four years ago, much as an Indian 
chief retire's from a hunting-country when there is not 
game enough left for his tribe ; and the club is said 
to be now tottering to its fall. 

Some good was certainly produced by it. In the 
first place, private gambling (between gentleman and 
gentleman) with its degrading incidents, illustrated by 
the foregoing letters, is at an end. In the second 
place, this very circumstance brings the worst part of 
the practice within the reach of the law. Public 
gambling, which only exists by and through what are 
popularly termed " hells," may be easily suppressed. 
There are at present more than twenty of these estab- 
lishments in Pall Mall, Piccadilly, and St. James', 
called into existence by Mr. Crockford's success. 
Why does not the police interfere.? If the police 
cannot, why does not the legislature? Not an hour 
should be lost in putting down this monstrous evil. 
We claim to be superior in morals and public order 
to the French ; yet all the public gaming-tables of 
Paris were suppressed four or five years ago, and 
(what is more) suppressed without difiiculty, the mo- 
ment the police set to work in good earnest.* 

Space permitting, we should be glad to make a few 
extracts from the numerous letters, in this collection, 
of the Rev. Dr. Warner, who has described many ob- 
jects of interest, and hit ofi' some curious traits of 
character, in a gay, vivacious style, which would be 



* Since this was written, a few of the most notorious London estabhshments 
have been suppressed. 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 447 

much more pleasing had there been less effort to make 
it so. He apparently took for his model the well- 
known letter of Madame de Sevigne, announcing the 
marriage of " la grande Mademoiselle," in which the 
main object seems to be to keep beating about the 
bush as long as possible. But the reverend doctor is 
inexcusably coarse and loose, and has often tempted 
us to exclaim, like Dr. Johnson when some clergy- 
men were endeavoring to show off in his company 
by assuming the lax jollity of men of the world, 
" This merriment of parsons is mighty offensive." 
Independently of the indecorous tone, there are sev- 
eral expressions and allusions in Dr. Warner's letters, 
and two or three in Gilly Williams's and Lord Car- 
lisle's, which offend, not merely against good taste, 
but common decency ; and Mr. Jesse has exposed 
himself to much censure by printing them. 

We are also obliged to omit many passages from 
the letters of Lord Holland, Miss Townshend, Mr. 
Storer, the Dowager Lady Carlisle, and Lady Sarah 
Bunbury, which we had marked for insertion ; as 
well as an entire letter of Horace Walpole's (vol. i., 
p. 4), which maintains his superiority as a writer of 
epistolary compositions. 

In conclusion, we are happy to say that the com- 
parison, suggested by these volumes, between the 
manners and morals of the last century and our own, 
is highly satisfactory. Intellectual tastes have nearly 
superseded the necessity, formerly felt by the unoc- 
cupied classes, of resorting to coarse indulgences or 
strong excitements ; and respect for public opinion 
induces those among them who continue unreclaimed, 



44^ THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

to conceal their transgressions from the world. It is 
also worthy of note, that the few persons of noble 
birth or high connection who have recently attracted 
attention by their laxity, are professed votaries of 
(what they call) pleasure, and are no longer en- 
couraged by the example, or elevated by the com- 
panionship, of men distinguished in the senate, the 
cabinet, or the court. No prime minister escorts a 
woman of the town through the crush-room of the 
opera ; no first lord of the admiralty permits his 
mistress to do the honors of his house, or weeps 
over her in the columns of the Morning Post ; no 
lord of the bedchamber starts for Newmarket with 
a danseuse in his carriage, and her whole family 
in his train ; our parliamentary leaders do not dis- 
sipate their best energies at the gaming-table ; our 
privy councillors do not attend cock-fights ; and 
among the many calumnies levelled at our public 
men, not one has been accused (as General Bur- 
goyne was by Junius) of lying in wait for inexpe- 
rienced lads to plunder at play. 

Though the signs are less marked, the improve- 
ment in the female sex is-iiot less certain; for it 
may safely be taken for granted, that the practice of 
gambling was fraught with the worst consequences 
to the finest feelings and best qualities of the sex. 
The chief danger is hinted at in The Provoked Hus- 
band. 

''■Lord Townley. 'Tis not your ill hours that always dis- 
turb me, but as often the ill company that occasion those 
hours. 

" Lady Townley. Sure I don't understand you now, my 
lord. What ill company do I keep?" 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. * 449 

'-'■ Lord Townlcy. Why, at best, women that lose their 
money, and men that win it; or perhaps men that are vol- 
untarily bubbles at one game, in hopes a lady vj ill give them 
fair play at another." 

The facts confirm the theory. Walpole's Letters, 
and the vokimes before us, teem with allusions to 
proved or understood cases of matrimonial infidelity ; 
and the manner in which notorious irregularities 
were brazened out, shows that the offenders did not 
always encounter the universal reprobation of society. 
Miss Berry, speaking, in her very instructive book, 
of the Duchess of Norfolk's divorce in 1697, ob- 
serves, — 

"Many circumstances of this lady's case show how much 
the ordinary habits of life were overstepped, and what pre- 
cautions were thought necessary previous to such miscon- 
duct. A house taken at Lambeth, then a small and little 
frequented village, whose nearest communication with West- 
minster was by a horse-ferry, — this house, hired and re- 
sorted to under feigned names, and occupied by foreign ser- 
vants, who, it was supposed, could not identify the lady, are 
not measures taken in a country where the crime they were 
meant to conceal was frequent." — England and France^ 
vol. i., p. 297. 

This test w^ould be fatal to the female nobility of 
England half a century later ; for many of them 
took no pains whatever to conceal their immoralities. 
We are obliged, from obvious motives, to refrain from 
mentioning some conclusive instances ; but it is noto- 
rious that Lady Vane gave Smollett the materials for 
the Memoirs of a Lady of Qiiality (herself) published 
in Peregrine Pickle ; that Lady Townshend sat (per- 
haps not so willingly) for the portrait of Lady Bellas- 
ton in Tom Jones ; and we can hardly do wrong in 
copying a note, which Lord Dover has annexed to 
29 



450 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

the name of a Miss Edwards, in his edition of Wal- 
pole's Letters : " Miss Edwards, an unmarried lady 
of great fortune, who (1742) openly kept Lord A. 
Hamilton." 

Gilly Williams mentions a caprice of a more re- 
spectable kind, which was far from uncommon at the 
period : — 

"Lord Rockingham's youngest sister has just married 
her footman, John Sturgeon. Surely he is the very first of 
that name that ever had a Right Honorable annexed to it. 
I made the Duchess of Bedford laugh yesterday with the 
story of Lord March's handsome Jack wanting to go to live 
with Lady Harrington." 

"The girls talk of nothing but the match between Lord 

Rockingham's sister and her footman. Never so much 

and discretion met together; for she has entailed her for- 
tune with as much circumspection as Lord Mansfield could 
have done, and has not left one cranny of the law unstopped. 
They used to pass many hours together, which she called 
teaching John the mathematics." 

Unless John was a very unapt scholar, he must soon 
have become as worthy an object of a lady's favor, so 
far as mental culture was concerned, as Sir John Ger- 
maine ; who, after occasioning the Duchess of Nor- 
folk's divorce, married a noble heiress. Lady Betty 
Berkeley, and lived till the middle of the last century. 
Miss Berry tells us that he actually left a legacy to Sir 
Matthew Decker, under a belief that he was the au- 
thor of the Gospel of St. Matthew ! 

It has been thought by some that w^e have lost in 
grace w^hat we have gained in decency, and that so- 
ciety is no longer so gay, easy, accomplished, or 
even lettered, as it used to be. Miss Berry, though 
she commends the fashion w^hich encouraged occupa- 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 45 1 

tion and mental acquirements, cannot refrain from a 
sl}^ sarcasm at the "new prodigies, who were ah'eady 
great orators at Eton, and profound politicians before 
they left Christ-church or Trinity," — the gentlemen 
to whom " it was easier to be foolishly bustling than 
seriously employed ; " and Mr. Moore maintains a 
yet more startling doctrine : " Without any disparage- 
ment of the many and useful talents which are at 
present nowhere more conspicuous than in the upper 
ranks of society, it may be owned, that for wit, social 
powers, and literary accomplishments, the political 
men of the period under consideration (1780) formed 
such an assemblage as it would be flattery to say that 
our times can parallel. The natural tendency of the 
French revolution was to produce in the higher classes 
of England an increased reserve of manner, and of 
course a proportionate restraint on all within their 
circle, which have been fatal to conviviality and hu- 
mor, and not very propitious to wit — subduing both 
manners and conversation to a sort of polished level, 
to rise above which is often thought almost as vulgar 
as to sink below it. Of the greater ease of manners 
that existed some foity or fifty years ago, one trifling, 
but not the less significant, indication was the habit, 
then prevalent among men of high station, of calling 
each other by such familiar names as Dick, Jack, 
Tom, &c., &c. — a mode of address that brings with 
it in its very sound the notion of conviviality and play- 
fulness, and, however unrefined, imphes at least that 
ease and sea-room in which wit spreads its canvas 
most fearlessly." — Life of Sheridan. 

We differ, with unfeigned reluctance, from Mr, 



452 THE WISHING-CAP PAPERS. 

Moore ; but he is surely mistaken in supposing that 
the higher classes of England have contracted an 
increased reserve of manner in consequence of the 
French revolution, or showrn more anxiety on that 
account to intrench themselves vs^ithin the privileges 
of their rank. On the contrary, the tendency of that 
event, and our own reform bill, was and is to make 
them more anxious to identify themselves in feeling 
and interest with the people. If they have ceased to 
be familiar, it is because they have ceased to be ex- 
clusive ; restraint is necessary, because society is 
mixed ; and there is no reason why men of rank 
should change their mode of address to men of rank, 
except that they live less with one another, and more 
with the world at large. The very peculiarity in 
question was observed by Mrs. TioUope in the most 
exclusive coterie in Europe, the creme de la creme of 
Vienna. "All the ladies address each other by their 
Christian names, and you may pass evening after 
evening, surrounded by princesses and countesses, 
without ever hearing any other appellations than 
Therese, Flora, Laura, or Pepe." 

This may be very agreeable for the privileged few, 
and we readily admit that intimacy is a great pro- 
moter of humor. Few of Selwyn's bon-m.ots could 
have been hazarded at a mixed party. But we are 
as far as ever from admitting Mr. Moore's proposition 
in the main. It is not flattery, but sober truth, to say 
that our public men have contracted no reserve beyond 
that which the voluntary enlargement of their circle 
has entailed upon them. It would be difficult to con- 
tend that they have impaired their social powers by 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 453 

mixing with eminent authors, men of science, and 
artists, whatever influence these may have exercised 
upon their wit or humor ; and, even as regards wit 
or humor, it would simply be necessary to run over a 
few known names to vindicate our equality in both. 
Modern conversation is rich with the product of every 
soil, the spoils of every clime ; and it would be a 
grave error to suppose that those who contribute most 
to it seldom meet in intimacy. They meet very often, 
but they belong to several coequal and intersecting 
circles, instead of keeping to one, and making that 
the sole object of interest. 

There are signs, moreover, that he who runs may 
read. It is clear that they talk politics as much as 
we do ; perhaps more, since their eagerness was so 
manifest to a French woman. " Madame de Bouf- 
flers (writes Williams in 1763) is out of patience with 
our politics, and our ridiculous abuse of every person 
who either governs or is likely to govern us." This 
was a serious drawback, but not the most serious. 
Selwyn's principal correspondents were not dandies 
and fine ladies, but the most cultivated men and 
women of the highest class ; including several on 
whom Mr. Moore would rely, if we came to a di- 
vision on the question. The masterpieces of English 
light literature, and several other standard works, ap- 
peared during their correspondence. Yet neither Field- 
ing, Richardson, Smollett, Gray, Goldsmith, Hume, 
Robertson, Johnson, Gibbon, or even Burke, elicits a 
remark. There is one allusion to Garrick (by Rigby) ; 
one to Reynolds (by Lord Carlisle) ; and one to 
Gainsborough (by Gilly Williams), as *' the painter 



454 '^^E wisniNG-cAP papers. 

by whom, if you remember, we once saw the carica- 
ture of old Winchelsea." 

There was no want of chissical acquirement, it is 
true ; many wrote graceful verses ; and Fox and Wal- 
pole had a taste for contemporary literature ; but Fox 
kept it to himself for lack of sympathy, and Walpole 
was ashamed of it. By literature, however, must be 
understood merely the Belles Lettres ; for Fox con- 
fessed, late in life, that he had never been able to get 
through the Wealth of Nations. 

Familiarity, again, is a great charm, but the habits 
which are the conditions of its existence, beget mo- 
notony. In Charles the Second's reign, when it was 
the fashion to go to sea and fight the Dutch, instead 
of taking lodgings at Melton or attending Battues, 
Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham, tells us in his Mem- 
oirs, that a party of gay, witty, lettered profligates 
were becalmed on board the Duke of York's ship, 
and got so tired of one another, that the first care each 
took on landing was to ascertain where the rest were 
going, in order to get away from them. We are not 
aware whether the habitues of White's or Brookes', 
seventy or eighty years ago, were ever brought to 
such a pass ; but we know (and there is no getting 
over this) that they habitually resorted to the gaming- 
table, — 

"Unknown to such, when sensual pleasures cloy, 
To fill the languid pause with finer joy." 

With rare exceptions, the most accomplished per- 
sons, about to risk more than they can afford to lose, 
will be found both ill disposed and ill qualified for 
the easy, equable enjoyment of conversation ; though 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 455 

(with the aid of wine) they may have their occasional 
bursts of sparkhng pleasantry. 

To sum up all — there is a halo floating over cer- 
tain periods ; dazzling associations may cluster round 
a name : " 'tis distance lends enchantment to the 
view ; " and living witnesses, who have known both 
generations, will always, by a law of our nature, 
award the palm to the companions of their youth. 
But it will require stronger arguments than have been 
adduced yet to convince us that the social powers of 
any class have fallen off, whilst morality, taste, knowl- 
edge, general freedom of intercourse, and liberality 
of opinion, have been advancing ; or that the mind 
necessarily loses any portion of its playfulness, when 
it quits the enervating atmosphere of idleness and 
dissipation for the purer air and brighter skies of 
art, literature, and philosophy. 






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